


Leave The Front Light On

by missmollyetc



Category: Primeval
Genre: AU, M/M, Season_Three_AU, WIP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:32:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My, how the years of our youth pass on</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I began this story, I believe, some time after the last Ice Age, and through the sort of luck one can only term 'dumb' and possibly 'Incredibly bloody lucky' worked with [fififolle](http://fififolle.livejournal.com/profile) as my beta. Her unfailing support was instrumental in getting any of this story to the state it currently inhabits, and I am utterly grateful. She is truly a lovely person, and I'm posting this unfinished story because I don't want her hard work to be lost in the wilds of my hard drive. I still want to finish this, but I'm not certain when that will be since my graduate school work is heating up, and I'm still working full time _and_ beginning my practicum at an academic library.  
>  The title and summary of this story were taken from ["Miles Davis and The Cool" by The Gaslight Anthem](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0YDaoAlIXU)

The funeral took place almost before the dust had settled in the ARC. Professor Cutter had been some form of lapsed Presbyterian, and with no family to contact, Ms. Lewis had taken charge of the proceedings, garnering a gravesite and a minister in record time. Former colleagues from the professor’s stretch at the university had been allowed at the memorial service beforehand, but were ushered out the back following the closing prayers. Most of the surviving ARC personnel showed up to see him laid to rest, so many that they flowed in tendrils down the hill Ms. Lewis had chosen, curving around the other graves like a broken octopus. The rest were in the nearest hospital with security clearance.

Becker pulled every single soldier off guard duty at the remains of the ARC, and ringed Professor Cutter’s grave like they were burying the Queen. Security detached in pairs to follow senior staff home until it was only Connor, standing watch while the digging crew piled on the dirt. At last, he directed Sergeant Robb and Corporal DeBarge to take Connor home. There was no wake.

Becker and the remains of ARC Two stayed on through the night; just in case the Widow Cutter decided to pop her head in.

 

***

 

The scar tissue on Becker’s back and side hated inactivity almost as much as Becker hated being chained to a desk waiting for some civvie to die horribly so that they’d know an anomaly had opened up again. Additionally, Lieutenant Howell was a smug little ginger cunt. If he didn’t stop smirking at him across their desks every time Becker lifted his head from the latest round of ‘this is why we really, really need more than rubber bands and pluck to fight the enemy’ reports, Becker was going to perform violence upon his person.

Howell set a fresh mug of coffee and a Lion bar on the corner of his desk and stood to attention, hands clasped behind his back. Howell had him beat by a few years in age, but he’d been in the TA before getting snatched, no out of country experience whatsoever. He didn’t like it at the ARC—that much he’d never bothered to hide—but he was friendly enough and good at surveillance, useful now that they were down to one SRR officer.

Becker set down his pen. The Lion bar roared enticingly at him, and the coffee was as black as the ink that had exploded all over his fingers when his first pen gave up the ghost. Well, all right. They had both been snatched into the ARC around the same time. He might delay the violence.

He was just reaching for the candy with his non-stained hand when Howell cleared his throat and stared over Becker’s head to stare at the flat, grey wall. Becker grabbed the coffee mug instead, and took a long sip. God, it was extra hot too, just how he liked it. Howell must have been after something major.

“Permission to speak, sir?” Howell asked.

Becker leaned back in his chair, mug clutched to his chest, and swallowed his scalding coffee. “Granted,” he said.

“It’s about the gear, boss,” Howell said. “I realize reconstruction of the building’s infrastructure is at top priority, but I was wondering if a timetable on the dissemination of office supplies had been set forth as of your last meeting with Mr. Lester?”

Ah. Howell wanted his PC back. So did Becker, if he thought about it. It’d been so handy and electric and _fast_ , and it’d never decided to blow up on him until outside forces had interfered.

“I believe non-essential electrical equipment has been classed as a low priority request,” Becker said. “Until the boffins can get the ADD back up and running on a permanent basis, most available power has to be diverted to the main grids.”

Becker could probably dig up an afternoon pass to get Howell off-base in time for a boot sale, if he wanted to find a typewriter to act as a form of methadone.

Howell nodded. “Yes, sir, I see. I don’t suppose…I don’t suppose Rabbit might have something he could cobble together for us?”

Becker straightened in his chair, and raised his eyebrows. “And why would Rabbit take the time away from his work on the ADD, Lieutenant?”

Howell’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. For a moment, his ginger eyebrows might have waggled. “On account of him going for a ride in your lap last week?” he suggested.

Becker considered not rolling his eyes, and then did it anyway. Damn, but scuttlebutt worked fast. He’d thought that Trooper Pierson had looked inordinately pleased with himself at the carpark. He smiled tightly.

“Connor’s been working two weeks straight to take his pride and joy off life support, Howell,” he said.

“You’ve hunted a G-rex together, sir. There’s a bond.”

Becker set down his mug. “He’s not here to get you back to PM’ing your missus.”

“It was just a thought, sir,” Howell said.

“And a happy thought it was, Lieutenant,” Becker said, already turning back to his reports, which still needed to be filed even when he couldn’t type them up. He reached out, and took another sip of his coffee.

“Staff meeting in five, boss,” Howell said.

Becker looked at the tarpaulin-covered space where his back wall had stood, but only saw the same ridiculous poster taped over it. His clock had also been rated non-essential during reconstruction. He stood, and gulped down the rest of his coffee.

“I’ll be on my way, then,” he said, setting the empty cup aside.

 

***

 

The walk to the PK’s office could have been cheerier. The lights had gone all flickery on the lower level, and suddenly the thought that their oxygen flow was controlled by the exact same electricity had become paramount. Becker had spent the entire time trying not to feel like a big girl’s blouse for quickstepping it to the higher levels where there was a chance of a window until whoever was working on the lines sorted them out. On the whole, the walk had been as quiet as Becker preferred, but in no way comfortable.

On the floor just below the nuthouse, the sounds of construction trickled down the hallway to his ears. He clicked his radio, keying in to the open feed.

“ARC One, this is ARC Zero,” he said, “How’s it looking today? Over.”

“This is ARC One,” Sergeant Okri replied promptly. “Be advised: The nuthouse is secure.”

“Roger, ARC One,” Becker said, pushing open the door to the nuthouse. “Query: Who’s on the perimeter?”

“ARC Zero, this is ARC Three,” Robb’s voice cracked into Becker’s ear. “I’ve got the boys sweeping the animal cages now, boss.”

“Acknowledged, ARC Three,” Becker said.

“Heads up, ARC Zero,” A woman’s voice burst into the feed. “I’ve got Poppet and Sheba coming in from the carpark.”

It took him a moment, but the name came to him. Georgie—that was, Corporal DeBarge—on surveillance, one of the few old guarders left on the team. She was the only SRR officer still alive, too; tough as an old boot.

“Acknowledged, ARC Eyes,” Becker replied.

He came up the curving ramp and into the wide, open ring that surrounded the outside of the nuthouse. The construction workers were thick as muck on this level, grouped around exposed rebar and shoring up places where that deadly frosted glass had once stood. Concrete, doubly reinforced all the way to the ceiling, was the name of the game now. If they were ever allowed back into the rec room, the bomb shelter jokes would be unending.

The first wave of construction had fixed the gaping holes and removed the worst of the rubble, now the work had begun to be specialised. Security had been overwhelmed trying to keep a handle on all the new faces. If they’d just give him enough staff for another team, the stress would be off. He couldn’t keep rotating what was left of ARC Two to shore up the other teams, and it was coming on Corporal DeBarge’s twenty-sixth hour as their eye in the sky.

Becker bypassed a skip full of rubble, and pushed through the nuthouse’s double doors into chaos. He sighed, and stepped carefully through the extension cords crisscrossing the floor in great loops and whorls. Here, at least, there approached a sense of normality. The labs were bright with lights—camp lights, yes, but they were working—and on the upper level Lester’s office shone like a stuffy beacon. He noted Okri’s boys spaced evenly on the walkway above. Trooper Pierson raised his hand off his mostly useless, but great for morale rifle, giving the all clear, and Becker nodded sharply.

“What’s our status on Cover Girl?” he asked.

The PK would already be at his desk, eyeing his wristwatch and despairing of them all, no doubt. Down on the main floor, Lester’s minions were already hard at work at their stations. The boys and girls from Processing had repossessed their open plan desks almost as soon as they’d been righted, and were now tap-tap-tapping away on their completely essential working computers, perched on seats made out of commandeered trestles and planks covered in their own coats.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” Ms. Lewis said to his left.

Becker turned his head, and nodded, standing at ease. “Ma’am,” he said.

He still had no idea why Ms. Lewis’ callsign was ‘Cover Girl.’ She came off as more Girl Guide than fashion plate in her tan trousers and loose blouse. She stepped closer, graceful in her flats, and Becker noticed that her eyes were red again. Still. She stood by his elbow, and Becker turned his body towards her, blocking the rest of the room.

“Ready for another exciting day of denied requests and inquiries into the status of our further requests?” she asked.

Becker clicked off his radio to the sound of quiet laughter—sounded like Sergeant Khan, who was supposed to be off-duty—and attempted a polite grin. Her forehead wrinkled, eyebrows drawing together, and Becker abandoned the attempt. He’d never been very good at small talk, no matter how many deportment classes his gran had made him attend.

“I can’t wait, ma’am,” he said quickly.

Ms. Lewis’ forehead smoothed. Her generous lips curved upwards, indulgently almost, and her eyes sparkled. She cupped her hands over her elbows, crossing her arms, and rocked a little on her feet. He’d never been led by a woman in the field. It was proving to be quite the experience.

“You know, you really must call me ‘Jenny’ more often, Captain,” she said. “Titles can be so cumbersome once you’ve fought monsters together.”

She grinned at him, suddenly, and Becker had his answer for why she was called Cover Girl after all. She had a smile a man would give blood to see. If her eyes truly hadn’t been red-rimmed for weeks, and her hands didn’t shake when she tucked her hair behind her ears, Becker would have almost called it flirting.

“Jenny,” he said. “I’ll remember.”

Jenny shook her hair off her shoulders. “Thank you, Captain, and may I—”

A shower of sparks and a high, screeching wail erupted from the center of the nuthouse. Becker grabbed Jenny about the waist, and dragged her behind him. She tucked, rolling on the floor and under a table. He dropped to one knee, free hand already drawing his sidearm and aiming—

“Yes! Yes! _Yes!_ ” Connor shouted.

The alarm went dead. Down Becker’s sight, Connor stood surrounded by the entrails of his ADD machine, a soldering iron in one hand. The long line of his back vibrated with excitement. He pumped his arms above his head, clenching his fists, and even his stupid hat seemed to shake with energy while the machinery around him roared to life.

“I did it! We’ve got power on the ADD!” Connor yelled, spinning in a circle. His grin could have powered the entire ARC for twenty years. “It’s back, well it’s sort of back, but I did it! Professor! Professor, we’ve…”

Connor stopped, staring into the middle distance. Becker lowered his SIG Sauer, but stayed kneeling, watching as Connor’s triumphant smile melted like hot plastic. Connor lowered his arms. Becker’s ears popped in the sudden silence.

Connor licked his lips, and bit down on the corner of his mouth. His head cocked just slightly. He leaned over, and set his soldering iron carefully on the floor. He stood up again, and fixed his hat, eyeing his trainers. Becker felt his back straighten, found himself trying to catch and hold Connor’s too-bright eyes on some gash instinct. He reholstered his pistol, and got to his feet.

“I, um,” Connor cleared his throat. “I expect there’s something else I should be doing right now so…I’ll go…do that.”

He didn’t so much walk as lurch past Becker on his way to the double doors, and no one tried to stop him.

Slowly, the noise level grew to its original decibel. Becker looked down at his hands, and carefully wiped his palms against each other. He turned his head, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of a slight cough. Jenny had righted herself. She leant against the table, head down, with her soft brown hair sliding off her shoulders.

“Right then,” she murmured, and took a great breath. She looked up, and Becker stifled his urge to offer his condolences once more. They never helped the people actually suffering.

“I should go after him,” she said.

She tried to smile bravely, but failed miserably, dry-eyed, just like Andy’s wife when he’d paid his respects at the funeral.

“I’ll do it,” Becker heard himself say.

 

***

 

Connor hadn’t gone far. Becker found him in one of the labs just off from the nuthouse, where they’d kept freeze-dried crap, or something. He hadn’t paid too much attention to that part of the welcome pamphlet.

Becker walked through the doorway, stepping over an extension cord and following it to the examination table where Connor was sitting with his half-gloved hands pressed to his mouth and his elbows on the table, staring at the cylinder recovered from the rubble. A desk lamp shone directly on it, light sparking off occasional flashes of metal through all the compacted grime.

Connor sniffed, rubbing his clasped hands against his mouth. Loose strands of cotton from his gloves caught in his stubble.

“Is there something happening?” he muttered around the backs of his thumbs.

Becker stood a foot from the table, and held his hands out at his sides. “No,” he said.

Connor’s eyes had bruised circles hanging off them, so black they had an indigo sheen. With Cutter dead, he was the lead scientist on senior staff and— just for a start—he’d been tasked with getting the ADD up and running. That he’d jury-rigged the fucking contraption well enough to catch the G-Rex before it shorted out again was nothing short of a miracle. He’d had to abandon every other project to do it, and if the mild pong was anything to go by, he’d also let bathing fall by the wayside.

Becker shuffled nearer the table. They weren’t friends, barely teammates. So far, he’d been pompous and Connor had been sarcastic. He’d…he had tried, but he couldn’t quite get the trick of talking to the Connor. There was something so…young about him, so ready to be pleased, and Becker couldn’t remember what that felt like. Afghanistan had birthed him, maybe, or else he’d somehow accomplished what Cutter had claimed in his files, and entered a different world through an anomaly without his knowing it. England—home—was so much harder these days.

Connor grunted, and his body shook a little. Becker suddenly, weirdly, wanted him to stop staring at that bloody tube Cutter had died for, but Connor didn’t, and Becker shoved the thought away. They needed to know what it was for, anyway, if it was important enough to bury people over. Becker stepped backwards, and knocked his boot heel against a fallen clump of plaster. He really wasn’t good at this shit. He was supposed to lead men into the battlespace and get them out again, not induce them to talk about their feelings.

Connor curled in on himself, only a little, barely a millimetre of movement, but it drew Becker in closer just the same. A chill settled more deeply into his skin. It was cold as fuck, always being underground. Connor was wearing a shirt, a waistcoat, and a scarf, but he didn’t look much warmer than Becker felt.

“I’ve…had a request,” he said, raising his voice.

Connor jumped, rattling the stool he was sitting on, and twisted to stare at him. “A request?” he repeated. “Like, a DJ request?”

He made a swishing motion with both hands. Becker paused. “No,” he said finally, “ah, my lieutenant…Howell?”

“I know Henno,” Connor nodded. He was blinking rapidly, eyes unfortunately shiny. Something bright dripped down the arch of his cheekbone, and Becker ignored it.

“He…we have a great deal of paperwork to fill out,” he said, sticking his hands behind his back and clenching them together. His scars protested the sudden movement. Fuck him bloody, he’d forgotten to stretch again. “I was wondering…if you had anything to spare, time or…parts or something.”

“Parts?” Connor’s mouth was twitching dangerously.

“Yes,” he continued, driving his fingernails into his palms. “If we could get online to the MOD we might be able to process our workload faster. It would be very helpful.”

Connor stood up, sliding down from the stool with a wiggle of his hips. He wiped his palms across his cheeks, and tugged on the brim of his hat with both hands. The dangerous shine to his eyes faded. He really was very good at getting down to brass, when it counted.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of time. Does Henno know what he needs?”

No doubt better than Becker did. Give him twenty klicks of desert and a broken-down jeep that had to make it to the next airbase, and Becker was your man. Hand him a computer and it was another matter entirely.

“Why don’t you go ask him?” Becker said.

Connor nodded. “Where is he?”

“Should be in the auxiliary mess, right about now.”

He sidled closer, and Becker stepped out of the way, forcing his hands to relax. Connor clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, stopping halfway out the door to turn back.

“Aren’t you coming?” he asked.

“I’ve got a meeting,” he said. “Can’t keep the PK waiting.”

“Who?”

Blast. “Nothing,” Becker said. He released one of his hands, and waved it at the door. “Hurry up, would you? Paperwork by hand is giving me cramp.”

That even got a laugh, barely more than a tired cackle, but it was something, and Becker was surprised to find he was glad of it. He waited until Connor was sure to be far enough down the corridor not to overhear, and then clicked into the open feed.

“ARC One, this ARC Zero,” he said. “Send one of the boys down to the shit lab on the outer ring, would you, Okri? I need a guard on the doorway, over.”

“Wilco,” Okri said, crisply.

 

***

 

It was stupid, more than that it was unprofessional, but Becker couldn’t follow a bleeding word out of the PK’s thin-lipped mouth. He’d tried the trick he’d used at Sandhurst, where he’d focus on the man’s mouth and practise lip reading, but his eyes kept skittering off towards the space where Lester’s floor to ceiling windows had been, and then bouncing back again. Every time he looked the men were in position, but still. There were so damn few of them, it made his throat turn sour.

“And then I thought, since we _are_ still expected to save the world, pre-and-post-historic, on a reactive basis with little budget and less personnel that it might be jolly fun to have a picnic,” Lester said.

“Yes sir,” Becker said. Wait. He shifted up in his chair. “Sorry, sir?”

Lester’s cold blue eyes surveyed him across the newly constructed boardroom table. He leaned back in his office chair, finely honed public school disdain in every controlled muscle of his face. Becker stared back, and braced himself for impact.

“No, Captain Becker,” Lester said, smoothing a manicured hand over his silk tie. “Doubtless it is I, your employer, who should apologise. Keeping you from a rousing game of grab arse with what’s left of your contingent, are we?”

Becker clenched his hands into fists in his lap. The table was high enough that Lester might not be able to see the motion. He kept his feet firmly planted on the floor. There was something about Lester that always made him want to fidget like he was back at school, waiting for the headmaster’s verdict.

“No sir,” he said. “Full attention, sir.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Lester said, leaning ever so slightly forward. “It’s such a comfort, having you in our merry band. One wonders how we ever managed before your able assistance…”

Becker shifted his eyes to somewhere at Lester’s shoulder level and let the man talk. You had to admire that sort of polite venom, or you did if it dripped off the tongue of your commander in chief. His last commander, a right PIG, had aspired to Lester’s way. Captain Tollin could flay a man raw at twenty paces with a sharp word, but he’d never matched Lester’s sheer aristocratic wrath. Becker felt his calf muscles seize and tighten as he ground his heels into the charred rug beneath him.

“James,” Jenny interrupted, loudly. “Have you had any luck on the revenue end?”

Becker startled, and looked towards her. She had her hands clasped over the file folders sprawled on top of the table. She tilted her face in Lester’s direction, and smiled encouragingly.

Lester paused, whether to switch gears and give Jenny both barrels, or from having his rhythm broken, Becker refused to contemplate. He leaned back in his chair, and shook his fists loose under the table.

“Yes,” Lester said. “How do you feel about opening up a new credit card?”

Jenny sighed. “That bad?”

“Oh no,” Lester assured her. “Much worse.”

Her face fell, and Becker was almost positive his own expression wasn’t much better. Lester seemed quite satisfied with their response, however, since he rested his left arm on the table and swung his right out to indicate the gaping hole where his floor-to-ceiling windows had looked out over the nuthouse.

“We were given our operating budget at the beginning of the fiscal year, you understand,” Lester said, “and we really must keep to it.”

“We were attacked!” Jenny smacked the flat of her hand on the table. “By a domestic…terrorist.”

Lester folded his arms across his chest, and shrugged elaborately. “Times are difficult all over. There’s a war on, you know.”

Becker swallowed. He felt his stomach twist and begin to burn with acid. “And the personnel?” he asked. “My people are already stretched to—”

“I might be able to swing you a couple from the Support Group,” Lester said, switching his attention away from Jenny with barely a change in gears. “1 Para seems to be less expensive than you special tommys.”

“Bloody fucking cocksmoking hell,” Becker muttered, and glanced over to see Jenny raising her eyebrows at him.

“Beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said.

Gran had raised him with an accent that could out-posh the Royal Family, but the Army had shaved his drawl and taught him to speak. Sometimes he forgot himself.

“Oh no,” Jenny said. “Repression is bad for the soul.”

“I’m glad you said that, _Jenny_ ,” Lester said. “Because I’ve just been dying for a bit of good news today. Anything interesting on the telly?”

Becker felt his attention begin to drift again and let it, to the sound of Jenny planning how they continued to explain away the deaths of a reporter, an editor, and a TV personality.

 

***

 

With a distinct lack of flourish, Becker signed his name to yet another requisition form, filled out neatly in bloody triplicate as per bloody specifications, and set it aside for the next fucking attempt to squeeze milk out of the Quartermaster’s tit. The next sheet was to restock their gun oil supply, which had been helpfully stored in the armoury, right next to everything else that’d blown and or burned to ash. He sighed, and dropped his pen onto his desk, shaking out his cramped fingers. The fluorescent light above him flickered, and he glanced up at it, trying not to count his breaths.

The light steadied, and he turned his attention back to his paperwork, ignoring the ache radiating out from his lower back. He rubbed his arms instead. Fuck it all, he’d boiled in his own skin for a year in Afghanistan and now, four months back on home soil, he could never get warm. Andy, his old sergeant, would have pissed himself laughing to see him now.

He blinked down at the latest in a long line of officially worded pleas for new weaponry. If he could just get this pile down to a manageable level tonight, then he could sort the rest out in the morning. Well, later on in the morning anyway, when the sun was up.

Half the rifles in the armoury were nothing more than showpieces right now, their payloads blown to hell in the Cutters’ divorce proceedings. They were down to tranqs, their sidearms, and a Gimpy with six shots left. While a machine gun went a long way with a gigantic lizard, it generally needed more than six rounds to totally convince it to run along home.

He picked up his pen again. Perhaps he could just attach a personal note to this one—only a small one—to whoever was at the end of their supply chain, and inform them that ARC SF might be a gash handed Special Projects Team held in indentured servitude to the PK, but they were still fucking UKSF and did not deserve to buy their weapons and ammo off bloody Amazon like the fucking Yanks, free shipping or not.

Becker sat back in his chair, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. The ache in his back spiked with pain at the sudden movement. He grunted. He fiddled with the earpiece of his radio, listening to Sergeant Robb direct his team on their fourth sweep of the night.  
Everyone’d been on edge since the explosion.

Becker couldn’t quite believe it’d happened himself. He’d been on the job just long enough to let a mad woman and her clone army storm the ARC, blow it up, and murder the project’s top scientist. Before Afghanistan, if he’d ever spared a thought for what exile would be like, it had not, he was almost positive, been this exciting. Clearly, he was due either several large and highly intoxicating drinks or a thorough and impressive demotion to his old unit.

He glared across the room at the motivational poster someone had taped to the enormous black tarpaulin covering the hole where half his wall used to stand. Whichever of his bastards had decided a twat gazing soulfully into the distance behind a British flag made for inspirational _pencil-pushing_ deserved to be shot. Or, more likely in this outfit, chomped by something ugly and ticked off about it.

It was O Dark Thirty. Howell was on surveillance. Robb’s team was watching over the nightshift boffins. He breathed out sharply through his nose, planted both hands on his desk, and stood, his back protesting all the way. His pen rolled off the side of his desk and clattered to the floor. If he hurried, he could get home for a kip and be back in an hour’s time to get through the rest of his paperwork, egg banjo in hand.

He glared over at his To-Do tray. The stack of files remained unmoved. Lester seemed to see ‘supply chain bollocking’ as a poor excuse for falling behind, and Becker was already past tired of seeing Lester’s disdainful upper lip curl in his direction every time the security subject came up at the morning debrief. Maybe he’d just raid the auxiliary mess for a cuppa and that pack of Hobnobs he’d seen hidden behind the microwave.

 

***

 

His office didn’t have a door anymore, but the builders had helpfully draped another black tarpaulin over the entryway so that Becker could at least pretend to a privacy he didn’t actually have. He slipped out with barely a rustle of the plastic, and taped it back over the lintel. The air was cool underground, and he shivered. Dust erupted from the floor as he walked down to the mess, stepping over debris too small to be considered part of the clean up just yet. They’d barely had time to bag up the bodies and inform the families before Lester had sent the construction crews in to rebuild.

The ARC had been made out of concrete and steel for its first go ‘round as an anti-tank testing site, and its second incarnation was shaping up no differently. The PK’d had the building declared safe for a skeleton crew within two weeks, and by three the ARC had been open for business, ready or not. The metal struts holding the nuthouse up above Becker’s head had survived the blast, and would survive ten more if Lester had any say about it. And he would. Scuttlebutt said he’d snatched the building out of the MOD’s pockets and taken their lunch money along with it. This was the PK’s ship and Becker was past certain that he’d be—

Something thudded to the ground behind the door of the mess, followed by the screech of metal against stone. Becker froze twenty feet away, and stepped closer to the concrete wall. He twitched the mic at the tapered end of his radio headset closer to his mouth with one hand and, with his right, unholstered his SIG Sauer, laying his finger along the trigger guard.

He clicked the radio on. “ARC Three, This is ARC Zero,” he said quietly. “Have we got eyes yet in the auxiliary mess?”

There was a pause down the line, and then Sergeant Robb’s soft, deep voice came through. “This is ARC Three,” he said. “Enquiry: What level are you on, sir?”

Becker pressed his lips together. His stomach tensed. Robb was stalling. The ARC had only ever had a lower level mess and the rec room, still being reconstructed. Becker felt his shoulders hunch and try to climb his neck. The scar tissue in his back began to pulse like a heartbeat. He forced his muscles to relax.

“Fourth level, copy,” he said, listening for any more noises.

Was that a warble? He surveyed the floor. No light poured out from underneath the door.

“Solid copy, ARC Zero,” Robb said. “Georgie’s on the CCTV tonight.”

Georgie? Corporal DeBarge. He’d thought he’d had Howell relieve her three hours ago. Howell had skived off before, but not since the blast. They’d have to have a few words after the morning security scheduling.

“Says she’s got nothing in that room,” Robb continued. “I confirm: We have no eyes on your level, copy.”

He sounded…not nervous, Special Forces bastards like Robb never had the willies, but he didn’t sound…quite right. He truly was hesitating. Becker raised his pistol to his chest, extending the barrel outwards. He walked slowly towards the door, keeping his back to the wall.

“Solid copy. Something I should be aware of, ARC Three?” Becker asked, pausing.

“Boss,” Robb said, “Be advised: I can be at your location in two minutes.”

Becker ignored him. The door to the mess was ajar—only just—as if someone had kept hold of the handle too long and the lock tumblers had twisted free. He extended his pistol, and reached for the door with his free hand. It opened a crack further.

No sounds of movement came past the door, not a murmur or the rustle of cloth. He pushed the door open wider, and a shaft of light broke through to the room within. Becker turned his head past the lintel and peered over the threshold.

Connor Temple lay curled inside a sleeping bag, a pillow bunched under the sharp black spikes of his hair, turning his moon pale face with its scruffy stubble up into the light. He was sleeping on a bed made out of two chairs jammed together. As Becker watched, Connor smacked his lips and turned over. One of the chairs groaned with his movement. A soft warble whispered from an oversized animal transporting case on the table next to him, bulbous eyes gleamed from behind basket-woven metal bars.

Becker lowered his pistol. Slowly, as quietly as he’d entered, he backed away, closing the door with a soft click. He backtracked ten feet away from the mess, and clicked his radio on again.

“What’s our status on Rabbit, Sergeant?” he asked.

There was a pause, and then Sergeant Robb sighed. “Rabbit’s bivouacked in the mess, Captain.”

“My office, I think,” he said into his radio.

He holstered his weapon, and retraced his steps.

 

***

 

Becker leaned back in his chair, specially appropriated from the one lab in the back of the ARC that’d survived the blast intact, and took stock of Sergeant Robb, standing in front of him.

At Sandhurst, they’d spent a great deal of Becker’s valuable time impressing upon him the need for an easy decorum between officers, NCOs, and the ordinary soldiers. There had been entire seminars on command presence and the requirements of leadership versus the necessities of modern combat. He’d even taken part in team building exercises.

“You utter piss-soaked twat,” he said, finally.

To the sergeant’s credit, Robb’s impressively thick blond eyebrows barely twitched in alarm.

“Yes, boss,” he said.

Becker’s trigger fingers twitched on top of his desk. He narrowed his eyes, taking stock of Robb’s easy parade rest. The sergeant humped the Gimpy in-field; he was a big man with hulking shoulders and a barrel-shaped body. Robb and most of ARC Three had been the second wave of the PK’s acquisitions and it showed in the easy way he herded the senior staff on site. Still, like Becker, he was one of the MOD’s broken toys, and a little too happy to be out from under UKSF’s official oversight.

“You’ve been letting him fucking _live_ here?”

“Yes sir,” Robb said again. “I’d say it’s been a week now. The boys and I’ve been keeping an eye on him and the beasties, making sure they don’t stray where they oughtn’t yet.”

“We’re half-way through reconstruction, for Christ’s sake,” Becker said. “We’re barely rated to work here, much less sleep.”

It presented a problem that his predecessor had never needed to overcome, weighing the benefits of continuing the ARC’s mandate against the danger to senior staff of an unsafe working environment. In pristine condition, the ARC was capable of supporting an onsite contingent. However, since Becker had driven it off the forecourt, the old girl’s value had depreciated considerably.

The sergeant nodded. His shoulders inched upwards in a poor excuse for a shrug. “We’d have steered him towards the on-call room, boss, but it’s still plugged up with rock.”

True enough. The in-house pits usually set aside for the on-call team had been directly in the line of the blast area. Becker resisted the urge to yank his hair out with both hands in front of a subordinate. He leaned forward over his desk instead. The chair springs creaked. The knot of tissue in his back protested the movement.

“Yes, sergeant, I quite see the problem there, but the point remains. Rabbit can’t stay here.”

Robb’s posture stiffened. Becker waited him out. In Afghanistan, there’d been no thought of insubordination. You broke ranks, you died. Christ, even if you _didn’t_ break ranks, you still died, but at least you’d kept your honour.

Robb took a deep breath, and bit his lips together, staring at Becker from underneath his eyebrows. “Permission to speak, boss?” he asked.

Becker nodded, and crossed his arms. Robb gazed at him, blue eyes turning just that little bit calculating, a sergeant sizing up an unknown Rupert. Becker felt himself sitting straighter in his chair, lifting his chin to meet Robb’s appraising stare. Andy’d given him that sort of look the day he’d stepped into the tent in camp, a lieutenant facing down three hardened sods he was supposed to lead into the mountains and back out again.

“Connor’s a good lad,” Robb said. “Talks a bit too much, but he mostly listens when he should and that’s more than I can say for rest of the idiots around here.”

Robb’s stance relaxed. He scratched the short hairs of his beard as he spoke. Becker’s jaw clenched. He thought he was beginning to understand.

“If his bird’s finally chucked him…” Robb continued, shrugging. “Well, a couple of weeks sleeping rough where we can see him won’t hurt, will it?”

The temperature in the air dropped further, it seemed, and Becker wanted nothing more than the flak jacket he’d lived in and hated all through his last tour. Connor was one of the team, and Becker wasn’t. He was just the replacement Rupert in a team that’d been run by its sergeants for over a year. Becker narrowed his eyes.

“What bird?” he asked.

The only romantic attachment noted in Connor’s file had been a woman called Caroline Steel, and a recommendation from the recently deceased Corporal Davis indicating that from now on the senior staff’s personal attachments should be discreetly vetted dependent on prolonged contact.

Robb cocked his head, tucking his chin to his chest. “Poppet, sir,” he said. “They’ve been living in sin for, Jesus, ‘bout a year and a half we reckon.”

No one loved gossip like a soldier unless they were a village granny, and even then it was neck and neck. According to their files, Connor and Abby did share an address, but Connor’s post was sent to a box at his old uni. Becker’d certainly never classed their behavior as romantic, but then, it wasn’t like he’d paid all that much attention. He found himself nodding anyway.

“I see,” he said, slowly. “Dismissed, sergeant.”

Robb pursed his mouth, but he saluted. Becker returned the salute, and waited until the tarpaulin had been sealed behind the sergeant to cover his face with both hands, trying to draw out their warmth.

 

***

 

It really wasn’t much of a decision, in the end. Connor couldn’t live at the ARC—mascot, or no—and Becker couldn’t overlook a danger to senior staff once it had been brought to his attention. He opened the door to the auxiliary mess, and stood in the threshold.

Connor was still asleep, tangled in his nest of bedding, and it looked as if the…the dipplidons had finally settled down for the night as well. There was an alarm clock resting on the counter by the sink and, as Becker watched, the hour clicked over to five. Connor must have been better at stealth than his files gave him credit for. Becker’s office was just down the hallway and he hadn’t noticed a thing. With a deep sigh, he reached out to his right and switched on the lights.

Immediately, one of the dipplidons squalled in protest, scrabbling in its carrier and waking up its partner, who warbled right back.

Connor jack-knifed to a sitting position, arms flying out from his sides. The chairs he was lying on promptly parted ways and sent him crashing to the floor in a swirl of bedding and charity shop clothes. Becker bit the ends of his mouth to keep from laughing.

“ _Whu_ —what? What’s it?” Connor called out. “Sid? Nancy?”

The dipplidons started chewing on the metal bars of their oversized carrying case. Connor twisted up from the floor, balancing on his knees with an arm on one of his chairs. His dark hair stuck up in a fan at the back, the rest of it plastered to his forehead. His eyes scrunched closed and then opened in the bright light. He turned his head towards the door, and Becker raised his hand in a little wave. Connor’s mouth dropped open and stayed there. His brown eyes widened.

Becker leaned against the doorframe, and raised his eyebrows.

Connor held out his hand, thumb poking through the seam of his shirt’s wrist cuff, palm up in Becker’s direction. “It’s…it’s not what you’re thinking,” he said.

The rust-coloured sleeping bag was lying in a tangle around a lime green pillow. Becker shifted his eyeline to the counter tops and curled his lip. Clothes hung up on a line covered the space between the refrigerator and the sink. Connor’d apparently been using the dish rack to dry his socks, which explained why Becker’s last attempt at an afternoon wet had tasted…oily. Becker grimaced. One crisis at a time, his old Rupert had always said, and even then only the crises that directly affected your chain of command.

“You cannot stay here,” he said firmly, “I don’t care what Robb told you—”

“No one’s told me anything!” Connor shot back, looking increasingly pale, even for him. “And I’m not staying here; I’m just…conducting experiments.”

“Experiments,” Becker repeated.

Connor’s eyes shifted left, then right. He puffed out his thin chest, and put his right hand on his narrow hip. He was wearing a grey long-sleeved top, and worn purple boxers.

“Yes,” he said.

Becker pushed himself off the wall and took a step into the room. His back protested again, but he ignored the warning. The creatures had breached the metal cage door and were working on widening the hole. Connor didn’t seem to notice.

“Into what?” Becker asked. “The effects of dipplidons on a mess room?”

Connor’s chest deflated. “Yes, all right, but it’s only on account of Abby’s brother Jack coming to stay, I mean…can’t live with a guy around your little brother, yeah? It might upset the little bastard and then—” Connor’s unaccountably pink mouth began to curve upwards. “—did you just call Sid and Nancy _dipplidons?_ ”

Becker paused, mouth already open to order Connor and his zoo out of the ARC and his hair while he was at it, but Connor had already bounded to his feet, grinning like an idiot and clapping his hands together. His stupid over-long sleeves ruined the sound, but it was enough to briefly startle the animals into halting their plan of escape.

“ _Dipplidons,_ ” Connor repeated, practically licking his lips over the word.

Becker inhaled through his nose. “I don’t think you’re focusing on the important part of that sentence, Connor. The ARC is not intended to house personnel at this time, and I want my mess back.”

Becker paused, and rewound his previous commentary. Yes, he had finished that with ‘I want my mess back.’ He raised his chin a littler higher. Damn well right he wanted his mess back. It had the only microwave in the entire ARC that hadn’t been used to reheat specimen jars for some arcane and probably disgusting purpose.

“Where else am I going to go then?” Connor asked. His hands slowly dropped to his sides.

Becker shrugged. “Find a mate’s, find another poor sod to mooch off of, find a hostel, I don’t really care. Just not here. Now get some trousers on, grab your trainers, and let’s go.”

Connor’s mouth thinned. One of the dipplidons warbled. Becker crossed his arms.

Connor huffed, and ducked his head. “Right,” he said under his breath.

He turned around, and Becker could see his shoulder blades through the thin material of his top. They rose and fell as Connor moved about the mess, gathering his clothes. He truly was a sight, no arse to speak of, all long legs and knobby knees. His thick, brown socks were worn at the heels. Really, the ARC did pay them a living wage plus danger bonus, the man didn’t have to dress out of a charity shop.

On the table, the dippli—Sid and Nancy had broken through the door of their carrying case and were now wrestling for the right to get out first. Becker rolled his eyes and walked further into the room.

“Look, it’s not that I don’t…well, all right, I have no idea why you thought living in the middle of a disaster area was a brilliant plan, but…you just…have to go,” he said, reaching out to push one of the creatures back in its case.

The creature hissed its displeasure, and nipped at him.

“Little _bugger!_ ” Becker shouted, jerking his hands clear.

Connor whirled around at the noise, socks slipping on the floor. He caught himself on the countertop and then pushed off towards the table, for all the world like a gangly puppy fresh out of the pet store window.

“Careful,” he said, hands outstretched. He ducked down, shoving his face nearest the hole the creatures had created. “All right guys?” he asked.

“Oh for…” Becker backed up, and dropped his hands to his sides.

It was late—early—whatever, there was no point in even trying to go home now. With traffic, he’d only have time to drive there, look at his front door, and come trundling back like the world’s most pitiful yo-yo.

“Just…just stow your kit in my office, and we’ll sort this out later, all right? I have to go…elsewhere.”

Connor popped upright again, and one hand reached up to scrub through the hair at the back of his head. “Really?” he asked. “Are you sure? You have an office?”

Becker sighed. The knot of scar tissue in his back yanked on his nerve endings until they shrieked. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”

 

***

 

Barring a tense moment when Becker had shown him to his office and Connor had called it ‘Ryan’s old HQ,’ the rest of the day was rather blissfully free of senior staff. Connor set up his little bundles of joy in the farthest corner of the office space and cleared the fuck out, leaving Becker to finish his requisition forms in some sort of peace. Sid and Nancy, apparently, were on a different sleep cycle and spent the time snuffling beneath Connor’s sleeping bag in their carrying case.

At 0600, Lieutenant Howell took one look at him, left, and returned with a full pot of proper SAS coffee—the sort that would kill a regular human—that they passed between them whenever the level of the liquid in their mugs dipped by a millimetre. In between gulps, Becker considered filling out another form and seeing if he could get the man knighted.

By 1000, ARC Three was joined by ARC One and he’d got through the armoury requests and was making inroads on the request for replacements from the SBS for ARC Two. Khan had lost his sniper team in the civvie evacuation, and even though they didn’t have much real need for sharpshooters, the amphibious experience was sorely missed. Becker felt better having some attempt at a full complement in situ. Trust the PK, he probably had a pair already singled out in 1 Para, but the MOD was a selfish bitch when it came to any personnel…especially when they weren’t going to get them back. There wasn’t any harm in trying to snatch a few extra men from her clutches.

He spent half an hour on his rehab stretches so that Howell wouldn’t sic a medic on him, and loosened up the scar tissue on his back and side enough to give him some breathing room for the rest of the day. Consigning ARC Three’s upcoming leave to the depths of training hell in full kit at the Kill House his predecessor had set up just inside Surrey until they fully realised why they never, ever should attempt to deceive their commanding officer again was a highlight, but mostly it was all forms and appalling Tesco sandwiches at his desk until Howell was standing over him, brandishing a jacket and looking not unlike Becker’s Gran, down to the severe green eyes and sensible footwear.

“Shop’s closing, boss,” he said, and set the jacket directly over the latest report from UKSF on something painfully dull.

Becker frowned at the mass of black Gore-Tex in front of him. He was a captain in the SAS. He’d been foot mobile in the mountains of Afghanistan, awake for forty-eight hour stretches at a time. His back was fucking whinging at him again.

“Same time tomorrow, Howell?” he asked.

“With bells on, sir,” Howell answered.

He waited, one eyebrow raised, until Becker had stood away from his desk and tugged his arms through the jacket. Then, Howell nodded sharply, turned on his heel and exited through the doorway, sliding underneath the tarpaulin just as Connor stumbled his way through it. He’d found another one of his hound’s-tooth trilbys and jammed it over his bedhead at some point in the day. His ears stuck out a little in front of the brim. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“Night, Henno,” he tossed over his shoulder at Howell, and then raised his hands in Becker’s direction.

“All right, so…I know that this might sound a bit daft, but I’ve been looking at this from all the angles and what’d you think of...” He shoved one hand in the front pocket of his tight, black trousers, fumbling for casual. “Do you think I could stay here, instead?”

Becker opened his mouth and then closed it. He blinked. “Sorry?”

“In your office,” Connor elaborated. “Look, Sid and Nancy already love it, and it must be safe if you’ve been spending so much time in it. Alex says you might as well have your post forwarded.”

He was going to bring Robb up on charges, see if he didn’t. Connor flung out a hand to the back corner of Becker’s office. Becker followed his fingers to where he and Howell had barricaded Sid and Nancy into place through the cunning use of a stolen step ladder and several broken chairs. There’d been an escape attempt around 17:58. Beady eyes stared out at them through the interwoven chair legs.

“No,” Becker said.

“Oh come on, mate,” Connor said. He sighed, shoulders slumping. “Where’m I gonna go that takes in Diictodons?”

Diictodons? Whatever, he had a point. Becker reached up and tugged on his decidedly non-regulation fringe. The thick brown strands caught in his gun calluses as they twined around his fingers. He’d gone to seed in hospital and never looked back. The Grooming Standard just hadn’t seemed to matter much just then and the nods in Hereford hadn’t dared contradict him. Andy would’ve called him on it, though. Here it was just one more layer of cover for the project.

He let his hand fall. He was tired, and he’d been cold for hours. The damn jacket wasn’t helping.

“Just…fuck it all, just come with me,” he said.

 

***

 

Perhaps the one perk of being assigned a clandestine operation was that he no longer lived in the Single Officers Barracks with thirty other blokes and three bogs. He had a nice little flat down a quiet cul-de-sac instead, with a view of…well, a view of the rest of the neighbourhood mainly, which suited him fine. He saw enough trees when he was chasing dinos through them. He’d take smog and car horns any day of the week.

Officially, he was ex-Captain Becker, just wounded enough to disqualify him for the military and living off his disability dosh. He paid his landlord in cash, and the good Widow Dawkins left him alone. Actually, she left most of the building alone, which was why he was living in a seven storey block with no lift. Still, it wasn’t that bad. The neighbours were quiet.

He took the steps two at a time, carrying the _Diictodons_ in their oversized carrying case with both arms. Connor’s sleeping bag covered the top in a vain attempt at camouflage.

Connor trailed behind him, huffing and puffing like he’d never had to walk upstairs before. Becker rolled his eyes, hefted his armload of dinosaurs, and ignored him. Sid and Nancy were surprisingly cooperative, or perhaps it was simply that they enjoyed the rocking motion. They’d calmed considerably in the car ride from the ARC.

Why he’d wound up carrying both of Connor’s annoying pets while Connor humped his bergan was beyond him. Connor’s eyes had done something truly pathetic and bizarre at the sight of the stairs, and suddenly Becker was picking up the carrying case and promising himself two paracetamol and a shot of tequila at the end of the slog. His back was unappreciative. The door to his apartment was a good twenty feet from the stairwell, and Connor spent the entire time gaining back the breath he’d apparently lost on the stairs in great racking gulps. At Becker’s door, Connor collapsed on the wall next to the threshold, holding his bundled gear against his stomach.

“Seriously,” he gasped. “Do you think next time you might slow down a little? Just for those of us who haven’t been beaten into Superman-like shape by order of Her Majesty?”

Becker shifted his grip on Sid and Nancy’s carrying case, and grit his teeth. “Actually, I was just thinking of making a motion at the next meeting to have senior staff begin regular PT.”

Connor’s back came off the wall, his mouth already gaping open. He was just beginning to flush a highly amusing rose when Becker slid the Diictodons’ covered case sideways, trying to balance it on his hip and free a hand to reach his house keys. An alarmed squall erupted from beneath the rust-colored polyester. Claws scrabbled against thick plastic and Becker grabbed hold of the case with both hands again, shoving his weight backwards into the wall and tilting the front end upwards as if that would keep the damn things inside. The Diictodons’ weight hit him square in the ribs and lodged there. His scars shrieked their displeasure, and Becker closed his eyes, inhaling through his nose and out again through his mouth. It felt so good; he did it twice more, just for the pleasure of feeling his lungs work.

“Right,” he heard Connor say quietly. “Maybe you should just give me that, or…or put it on the floor for a moment.”

Becker took the time for another breath, just to slow his blood, and opened his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said, “and I’d rather not chase your two up and down the hallway tonight.”

Connor dropped his bergan to the ground with a smack, and held out his long arms. Becker blinked, slowly, and stood clear of the wall. Connor flicked his fingers at him, waving his hands towards his chest. Fine, they were his dinosaurs anyway.

Connor bit his lips and grunted a little when Becker made the transfer, but there wasn’t a peep out of the trio while Becker dug his keys out from his trouser pocket and opened the door. He walked into the small entryway and turned, holding the door open with one hand.

Connor pushed past him into the flat proper, kicking his bergan in front of him. He set the carrying case down on the grey carpet of the living room, and turned in a slow circle.

“So…” he said, pursing his lips. He tried for a grin, licking his full bottom lip and showing his teeth. “Home sweet home?”

“It does its job.”

Becker closed the door behind them both, locked it and set the chain, before taking off his jacket and hanging it on the hook he’d nailed to the wall in the entryway. He followed Connor into the living room.

“Do you have the heat turned this high everywhere?” Connor asked. “I think I sweated through my shirts on the car ride over.”

Becker jerked his chin at the futon he’d set up as a couch, shoved against the far wall.

“That’s yours,” he said, ignoring him. “Tea in the kitchen you just passed by, bog’s the door on your right by my bedroom.”

He walked past Connor, stepping over the groundsheet where’d he’d been piecing together an old Bugatti EB110 engine in his off hours, and opened his bedroom door.

“Night,” he heard Connor say behind him.

Becker shut the door behind him, and managed the four steps it took to collapse face first on his bed in record time. He bounced on the mattress, groaning as the springs protested underneath him, and flopped onto his back.

Some previous tenant had left glow-in-the-dark stickers plastered to the ceiling above him. Random bursts of stars and comets and, oddly, clouds swirled above his head. Becker took a deep breath and let it out again, idly following the vapour trail of a comet while he listened to Connor puttering around his living room. The walls were a little thin. He hoped Connor didn’t make too much noise. He hoped the Diictodons didn’t destroy anything.

The paracetamol bottle was on his bedside table. He reached over, cracked the top, and poured directly into his mouth. The tequila was in the front room. He dry-swallowed the pills in lieu of getting up again, dropped the bottle back onto the nightstand, and let himself fall asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Becker sighed, and checked his watch for the third time. Stubbornly, a well-tuned anomaly did not open a portal to half an hour earlier giving him plenty of time leftover to grab extra toast, jam, and tea for the drive in to the ARC.

“Why don’t you have a car of your own, again?” he asked.

At least he’d managed the breakfast portion, but Connor’d been running around with the Diictodons from the moment Becker had woken up and kicked him off the futon. He’d drunk the rest of the tea as well, and apparently used his spare time last night to bundle up Becker’s engine and stow it behind closed doors in the linen closet. When Becker got his hands on a third cup of tea, they were going to have words.

“It’s just…a _car_ , you know?” Connor answered, voice muffled from being inside the cupboard under Becker’s sink. “That’s a big purchase and I—”

There was a short scuffle, and then a pronounced warble, but Becker couldn’t have said who’d made the noise, Connor or the creature who had taken an inordinate interest in plumbing. He scratched a hand through his fringe, and sighed. Underneath his kitchen table, one of the creatures—Connor had called this one Sid, damned if Becker could tell the difference—made a contented noise. Becker crouched down, resting a hand on his table for balance. Sid shook his beaked nose in his direction and sneezed, kneading Connor’s pillow beneath his front paws. Becker looked from Sid to where Connor’s skinny arse waved at him from the cupboard. Where exactly _did_ one find purple trousers, anyway? And why had Connor wanted to?

“Does this happen regularly?” he asked. “I’m just thinking in terms of time management here. I’m sure the sergeants miss me when I’m not at work, and I think there’s probably something exciting I have to requisition.”

“Oh, Abby got them house-trained pretty quickly,” Connor said cheerfully. He ducked his body out from under the sink, but kept his arms extended. “They just don’t like living out of cages and…well, I—they like a bit of space—Ow! Oh, sorry, Nancy…”

“‘Nancy’ is under my sink,” Becker pointed out.

Connor fully withdrew from the cupboard with a wriggling Nancy clutched to his chest, and stared at Becker, on his knees. “Well, they’re curious, aren’t they? New digs, new smells…”

He shrugged, grinning, and Becker stood up again with a groan. “Just as long as they don’t get too comfortable,” he said. “Now then…” He swept his left arm towards the door, and raised his eyebrows. “Shall we?”

Connor blinked up at him. Becker waited, but Connor stayed put, staring until Becker had to resist the urge to wipe his mouth for stray traces of jam. Finally, Nancy warbled and kicked Connor in the thigh with her hind leg.

“Right then,” Connor said, ducking his head and dropping her to the floor. “I’ll just grab my hat. Are we going to be late?”

Nancy scampered underneath the kitchen table to a joyous reunion. Becker jingled his car keys in the air, and nodded.

 

***

 

The security camera followed them as he and Connor drove into the ARC carpark. By the time he’d locked the car, walked away, returned to unlock the car so that Connor could retrieve his bag, and then finally made it to the side entrance, Becker was reasonably certain the entire ARC SF knew he’d taken Connor home with him last night.

“Look, all I’m saying is that I wouldn’t have expected a Saab, is all,” Connor said, easily matching his pace on level ground. “I mean, I’m sure they’re a lovely company, but it’s not—not really the image I’ve got for you, you know?”

Becker shrugged, and keyed open the door to the ARC. “It’s a hire car,” he said.

“And they didn’t give you a choice?”

Connor walked in first, stumbling a little over the threshold as he turned to keep Becker in sight. He’d obviously slept. The bags under his eyes had faded to a steely grey.

“What do you care?” Becker asked. “You don’t even have a car.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of pride about the vehicles I ride in,” Connor said, walking backwards and adjusting the pale orange scarf wrapped around his neck. “I mean, at least I could pretend I was Michael Caine in Abby’s Mini.”

Becker scratched his chest, fingers stumbling across the large ARC badge embroidered over his heart. He grabbed Connor’s elbow and turned him around to face the direction they were walking.

“And here I always saw you as more of a Charlize Theron,” Becker said.

Connor’s steps faltered a little. “Really?”

“You’re the spitting image. How’s it going on that anomaly plug you’ve been working on?” Becker asked.

He led Connor past the security desk where, if they had had the manpower, there would have been two soldiers with very large guns and a metal detector. As it was, he counted it a bleeding victory that Khan had scrounged a claymore and some C-4 set on a remote control to rig up around the entryway.

“Oh,” Connor said, and looked down at his scuffed trainers. “Well, I’ve had to put that to the side, as it were.”

Becker glanced at Connor’s profile. He’d nicked himself shaving sometime before Becker had woken up, and who, except for crazy people of course, shaved _before_ getting into bed? It made him wonder how much sleep Connor had actually accomplished, but at least Connor’s skin had lost that waxen, sickly pallor.

“Why?” Becker asked, slowing them down.

Ahead of him, they ran into the first security check, Trooper Pierson and Corporal Craig, ARC One’s sniper/spotter team. Lying on the floor, Pierson leveled the Gimpy on its bipod in their direction, sighting at chest level, while Craig aimed his Browning High Power and painted Connor’s head. Connor didn’t seem to notice the red dot dancing on his hat, but Becker nodded sharply at them. They were good lads. There’d be no more clones on ARC SF’s watch.

“Too much to do,” Connor said, shrugging. He fiddled with his scarf again, fingers drifting up to scratch at the scab on his chin. “I’ve the ADD just this close to working properly on its own, and the—um, can I have my arm back? I think we’re going to die.”

Becker stopped walking, and looked down. Bloody fuck, he was still holding Connor’s elbow. He let go, and put a very clear step between them. On Pierson’s head waggle, Craig moved to the side and met them, still blocking the hallway.

“Good morning, boss,” he said cheerfully, weapon extended. “Can I hear your bona fides for old times’ sake?”

“Helen Cutter is a slag,” Becker responded.

Connor made a high-pitched snorting noise, like a laugh dying from strangulation, and Becker felt his lips twitch upwards. The sergeants had taken on creating the passcode rotation as a special treat during reconstruction. There were many variations on the Helen Cutter theme, including several ideas about what she’d gotten up to with all those clones. The senior civvies had, of course, received a more appropriate selection. Craig lowered his sidearm to chest height, and looked meaningfully in Connor’s direction.

“Oh,” Connor jerked his hands up, slicing the air with his palms. “Right, um…just a second, I’ve written it down somewhere…”

He bent at the waist, dragging his messenger bag up by the strap, and flipping open the thready canvas flap. Craig cocked his head, the tribal facial tattoo flexed as he wrinkled his pug nose. Apparently, it was the crowning jewel of his collection. Lester had thrown a genteel fit, to hear it from Sergeant Okri, but there wasn’t much he could do. Corporal Craig had been at the ARC long enough to know he wasn’t ever rotating out. Identification by the enemy wasn’t such a huge problem when the enemy was a Triceratops.

“That might be the best passcode I’ve ever seen, mate,” Craig said, grinning.

Connor looked up from digging in his bag, one hip extended for balance. “Sorry, what?”

Becker sighed. “Right, I’ll just leave you to it, shall I?”

Connor waved him off, head ducked down over his messenger bag. “Yes, okay, see you tonight,” he mumbled.

Was Trooper Pierson giggling into his elbow? Becker stepped around Craig. “Anything interesting happen while I was away?” he asked.

“PK’s passed the word that he wants to see you,” Pierson said, admirably straight-voiced, though muffled, from the floor. “Sarge reckons he’s off on one.”

“Who’s the PK?” Connor asked.

Becker chose the better part of valour, and left his men to come up with an explanation. He checked his wristwatch. Just enough time to sign out his pistol from the armoury, and skitter up the ramp to the PK’s office to get torn a new arsehole.

 

***

 

For a wonder, the PK was alone when Becker came into his office, nary a secretary in sight. Becker closed the door—of course, Lester had his door back in record time—and came to attention in front of Lester’s desk. He’d got his windows re-paned too, and didn’t that just go to show.

“Sir,” he said, looking down at the wispy, brown cowlick on the top of Lester’s head.

Lester hmm’d at him, making note of something no doubt terrifically important in a green file folder with a silver pen. He glanced up at him, and sighed.

“Sit down, Becker,” he said. “You’re making the place look untidy.”

Becker licked over his teeth behind his lips, and sat on the edge of the office seat opposite Lester. He rested his hands on his knees, digging his fingernails into the seams of his trouser legs. He waited. Lester wrote.

Finally, Lester set down his pen, and closed the folder. He interlaced his fingers on top of the file, and pursed his lips.

“Yesterday, the contractors informed me that reconstruction would take more time than previously anticipated,” he said, meeting Becker’s eyes squarely. “I’ve ordered that further efforts continue overnight to speed results.”

Bloody shitting ratfucking hell. Acid flashed across his nerves, scoring grooves into his bones.

“Sir, you cannot do this,” he said. “My people have been running themselves ragged to cover the security gaps, we simply do not have the resources to provide—”

“I am well aware of our lack of resources, Captain,” Lester said. His jaw worked, teeth grinding together. “In fact, if you hadn’t noticed, the rest of the staff have been working on rather reduced circumstances themselves.”

Becker jerked in his chair, legs pushing him upwards, but there was nowhere to go. The ARC was the end of the line, and he had no chain of command but Lester, not in this outfit. He stood, hunched, with his hands planted on the desk. Lester stared at him, raising his eyebrows.

Becker choked down his gall, and spoke. “I have _thirteen_ soldiers with no gear or support to protect a facility the size of a football field plus the constant influx of new personnel to replace the structural damage. I—we’ve been damn lucky—”

“Do not talk to me about our _luck_ , Captain,” Lester barked. “If you hadn’t noticed, ‘luck’ has been in short supply here at the ARC, and it is about to become even more precious.”

Becker sat down again, keeping the PK in his sights. “What do you mean, sir?” he asked, carefully.

Lester rolled his eyes elaborately, and sighed. “Oh, I don’t know, Captain. Didn’t it strike you as _odd_ that a project surrounded by as much secrecy as the ARC should be plagued by a poorly dressed tabloid reporter with delusions of grandeur? Or that it should take _this_ long for your directorate to send along replacements for a military operation on home soil? Do you think it’s really that hard to obtain a couple of Special Forces louts in disgrace with the ministry? It’s not like you lot particularly take care of whom you might embarrass.”

Becker shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Lester motioned him to retake his seat. “Yes, I rather thought you hadn’t. No, something’s gone velociraptor-shaped at Whitehall, Captain Becker, and the fallout’s come ‘round my end. We need to be prepared. I will not be defeated, and neither will this project.”

Becker felt his head wobble a little. Politics, was it? Bugger. “Is this…does this have something to do with Captain Wilder, sir? And that woman, Christine Johnson?”

Lester raised his eyebrows a full half-inch. “What makes you think that?”

Becker clicked his teeth, clenching his jaw. “With respect, sir, I am not stupid.”

Lester’s eyes flicked up and down. Becker could feel them like a laser sight across his frame. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for that, Captain, but as a matter of fact, you are correct.”

“Senior staff should be informed,” Becker said, “They need to be—”

“Senior staff are not responsible for their own security,” Lester interrupted again. “That would be your job, Captain.”

Lester took a breath. He smoothed down his blue and red striped tie with one hand. Becker clenched his hands into fists, and sat very, very still. They were being hung out to dry, all of them from Lester on down. The air had a snap to it, an ozone haze like the night before a firefight. Becker fixed his eyes firmly on his commanding officer.

“Orders, sir?” he asked.

“Until further notice, Captain,” Lester said. “I’ve decided to take my ball, and go home until the children learn to play nicely with it. We’re moving into the private sector. Your new men should be arriving within the day, thanks to my wife’s last cocktail party. They’re even Special Forces, too. Well, they were, but official disavowment is such an outmoded idea, isn’t it?”

He reached into his suit pocket, and withdrew a leather case, the kind that rich men used to hide that they used anything so gauche as a bankbook. He opened the top with his thumb, and picked up his silver pen with his free hand.

“Now, our first priority is getting the ARC back to full operational power. How much do you think you’ll need to reload that Mossberg I’ve seen you fondling in the armoury?”

 

***

 

Two hours later, Becker escaped to his dimly lit office with Lester’s cheque burning a hole in his pocket. He found Connor sitting cross-legged on his floor in between his and Howell’s desks, surrounded by bits of wire, two monitors, a keyboard, and several charred CPUs. A walkie-talkie lay by his knee. Lieutenant Howell hovered at his back, peeking at the junk like a kid at Christmas.

“You call Lester the Pirate King?” Connor asked. “Honestly?”

“Yes, honestly,” Howell said, chuckling. He scratched the tight, ginger curls popping up on the top of his head.

Becker looked at them from the threshold. Connor had a pen tucked behind his ear and another twirling in between the fingers of his right hand. He was smiling at the detritus spread out in front of him, practically giggling. He looked about twelve.

“But, why?” Connor asked. “I mean, not that I couldn’t ever see him in an eye patch, but—”

Becker pressed a hand to his chest, feeling somehow hollow, like the space under his ribs had been scooped out without his notice. He shook his head, cleared his throat, and the moment passed.

“Because he keeps what he takes,” he cut in, walking into the room. “What are you two doing?”

“Shoving us back into the computer age, boss,” Howell said, beaming.

At any moment, he was going to give Connor a biccie for good behaviour. Becker walked to his desk and sat down, grabbing a stack of files—fresh ones—from his To-Do tray and setting them in front of him. He bent his head. He heard a footstep; probably Howell.

“I want the sergeants in my office, Howell, ASAP,” he ordered, already flipping through the latest armoury inventory. Okri had been serving out his time at a depot before the ARC, hadn’t he? There might be a contact there.

“Yes, boss,” Howell said.

Becker lifted his head and yelled after him. “And pass the order for everyone to come in. I don’t care if they’ve stepped outside for a slash, tell them to zip up and get back in-house. Do you have to do that in here?”

“Boss?” Howell turned around, one hand already throwing back the tarpaulin.

“Connor,” Becker said.

“Sorry, boss,” Howell said, and the tarpaulin closed him off from view.

Becker moved his sightline across his desk, where Connor’s wide-eyed face was staring at him from the floor.

“Is it Helen?” he asked, getting to his feet in a clatter of debris.

Becker swallowed. “No,” he said. “There’s nothing—”

“I’m not stupid,” Connor said, flushing. “I’ve been with this project since it was me and—and Stephen in the professor’s office at uni. The military doesn’t get stroppy—”

“ _Stroppy?_ ” Becker interjected.

“—unless there’s a reason,” Connor finished over him. He licked his lips. His hands flicked back and forth between them, and bounced on his toes like he thought he was a prizefighter. “So what’s up?”

Becker clenched his jaw and ducked his chin sideways. He should have waited. He should have ordered Connor out of his office on first sighting.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he said.

“I’m getting Jenny,” Connor said. He kicked aside a CPU and went for the doorway.

Shit. “Wait,” Becker said, coming out of his chair. He wasn’t to let senior staff in on Lester’s project unless it became necessary. The PK had been very clear. “It’s nothing…I’m just hacked off, that’s all. Lester’s new timetable for reconstruction is…it’s a flaming pain in the arse.”

Connor crossed his arms over his chest, vibrating in place. Becker held himself very still. Finally, Connor seemed to shake himself loose again. His arms dropped to his sides, and his posture relaxed.

“Is that all?” he asked, a smile sliding up his mouth.

“Yes,” Becker said, turning away to re-stack the files on his desk. “It means I’ll have to remain onsite twenty-four hours a day until the work’s done.”

“Yeah? Does that mean I have to as well? Seeing as how you’re my flatmate now.”

Oh Lord. The irony was lethal. Becker let his eyelids slide closed and took a very deliberate breath. “No,” he said, opening his top desk drawer. “You can still use my futon.”

He opened his eyes, and plucked his car keys out of the drawer, tossing them in Connor’s general direction. He heard them smack something, but as Connor didn’t squeak in pain, he figured Connor’d caught them instead.

“Cool,” Connor said. “I promise not to let it run out of petrol.”

“Ta ever so,” Becker said.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m trying to sleep in the ARC or something.”

“Oh, get out,” Becker said. He turned in his chair, hooking his arm around the back, and glared.

Connor grinned at him. He tossed Becker’s car keys into the air, and caught them, already backing through the doorway.

“No problem, mate,” he said. “I was never even—oof!”

Becker snorted.

“All right, Connor?” Sergeant Khan asked.

Over Connor’s shoulder, Becker saw Khan’s rather generous mouth quirk up in one corner. Khan raised his hands and grasped Connor’s upper arms. He set Connor gently back on his feet, and off Khan’s chest, with an amused grunt. Connor hissed in breath through his teeth, and swung around.

“Sorry Ranjeet,” he said. “Just getting my car keys,”

He held up Becker’s key ring. Becker cleared his throat.

“Must dash,” Connor said, mashing the keys against his chest. “I’ve got a…thing.”

The sergeant stood aside to let Connor past him in the doorway, and then came into the room proper. He saluted casually, coming to rest a yard from Becker’s desk.

“The lieutenant said you wanted me, boss?” he asked.

Becker returned the salute and pointed over at Howell’s desk. “That was quick,” he said. “I thought I sent you home.”

Khan shrugged. “Got nervy,” he said. “I was kipping in the carpark.”

“I thought I recognised your feet sticking out that car window,” Sergeant Okri said, bending so that he fit underneath the lintel.

“Was that what was making that bleeding pong?” Robb piped up behind Okri.

Becker waved them both into the room. Howell followed behind Robb, and they took up a position next to Khan on Howell’s desk. Becker looked them over. He didn’t know where to begin.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and there must have been something in his face, maybe his tone, because in a heartbeat he wasn’t looking at men, but at soldiers and it cheered something deep inside him.

He stood as well, and moved out from behind his desk. He leaned on the desktop. File folders shifted under his hip.

“What’s the word, boss?” Howell asked quietly.

“We’re going to war,” Becker said, “and it’s going to have to be on the cheap.”

“I don’t understand,” Howell said. “Are we being redeployed?”

He didn’t sound displeased at the idea. Howell had a very pretty young wife, and no prospects for advancement except over Becker’s corpse. It was common knowledge the ARC was the end of the line. Becker felt his mouth curl downwards, and crossed his arms. None of the sergeants spoke.

“Not at all, Lieutenant,” he said. “Actually, we’ve got enough trouble rising up on our arses right here at home.”

Of all of them, Khan had the most experience in getting fucked up the arse by the higher ups. He’d been trapped at the same training facility at Hereford that had held Becker, after all, and for much the same crime. He sparked on the idea first.

“Are we being disavowed, boss?” he asked.

Becker shook his head. “Not yet, not officially. We’re being…starved out.”

“We’re not closing shop, are we?” Okri asked, dragging a hand over his smooth head.

His long, worn face wrinkled as he craned his neck down to look at Becker. Even with one hand and the right side of his neck wrapped entirely in bandages Okri was an impressive sight. He stood 6’5” in his stocking feet, and moved faster than a greased gymnast. His parents were Nigerian immigrants, and to hear him talk, they thought the sun rose and shone directly out of Her Majesty’s arse.

“Fuck that,” Robb spat. “I’ve sunk blood into this place.”

“We all have, Robbsie,” Okri muttered. He waggled his injured hand.

“Put that down before you hurt yourself, you lummox,” Khan said.

He stared at Becker, cool black eyes assessing him right down to his boots. Becker dug the fingernails of his right hand into his palm. He was heartily sick of being measured up like a raw recruit.

Howell took a step forward. Becker broke free of Khan’s stare to keep Howell in his line of sight. Howell was almost as new to his rank as Becker was.

“Where’s this coming from, Captain?” Howell asked. “Not the MOD, or we would have heard something days ago. I can’t believe—”

“The project’s not ending,” Becker said. He pushed off from the desk and stood, crossing his arms. “Look, we’re all here because we pissed off the wrong Rupert, am I right? Well, now the ARC’s blown up the wrong bitch’s skirt in Whitehall, and we’ve got to hold the line until the PK can sort this shit out. Until further notice, we’re on watch twenty-four-seven. No one goes home until the end of construction.”

“Do we have anything to work with?” Okri asked. “I’ve been hoarding my bullets like they were my fucking babies.”

“Is that why I caught you singing lullabies in the armoury yesterday?” Robb asked.

Becker made a fist and jerked his thumb up to the ceiling. “The PK’s stolen us five more men from…well, originally it was 22 SAS, but they’ve been stuck on dunes in Tunisia for eighteen months guarding a sub station that doesn’t exist, so getting them up to speed might prove amusing.”

“What were they doing in the bloody desert?” Robb scoffed.

“Playing Mad Max, I presume,” Becker said. “Whatever they’ve been doing—or did to get there—is not the point.” He took a breath. “The point is that we need to isolate them, suss them out, and then—if necessary—take definitive steps.”

The sergeants were silent. Howell didn’t seem to be breathing. Becker let the moment stretch, because this was important. This was when he sussed _them_ out. His back twinged at him, reminding him that he hadn’t taken the time to stretch out since yesterday. He ignored the pang, and watched his men put together the staffing delays, the denied supply requests, the lack of _aid._ They didn’t like him, didn’t know him, but they knew the ARC down to its bones. ARC Special Forces didn’t have a superior officer to turn to here. Prior to his first meeting with the PK, Becker had been introduced to Major Cunningham-Hayes exactly once upon his reassignment to the ARC and been cordially invited to forget regimental command’s phone number for anything more official than a monthly reminder that ARC SF existed. Reality was, it went from God to the PK to Becker, and now, to them.

Robb came to his decision first, and it wasn’t much of a surprise. Robb was…Robb. He nodded curtly, glaring around the room, and reached up to slap Okri on the back.

“The bleedin’ hearts around here’d be sitting ducks without us,” he declared.

Khan nodded. He put his hand to the back of his neck, and snorted. “Truer words, mate,” he said. “Ray?”

At thirty, Okri was the oldest sergeant—the oldest man—in ARC SF. Becker kept his urge to pump his fist at the sky and declare Victory in Europe to himself until Okri spoke. He didn’t have long to wait.

“Should we be expecting an incursion?” Okri asked evenly. “We can rig the main entry with more explosives once construction stops.”

“I’ve got some White Phosphorous saved up against a rainy day,” Khan said.

“Even so, we don’t have the ammo to repel a fluffy bunny right now, boss,” Howell said. “And we’re not likely to get any, with the amount of requests I’ve had returned to me on account of ‘insufficient data present.’”

Howell did not look happy, but he looked solid, and Becker would take the latter over the former any day. Becker pulled Lester’s cheque out of his pocket, and held it up, spread open so everyone could get a good look at the number of zeros.

Robb whistled. “What kinky shit did you twist into to get him to pay that out?” he asked. “Sir.”

“A story for another time, Sergeant,” Becker said. “Now, we’ve got the dosh once I cash this in. How are you at obtaining dangerous materials?”

“Bet you anything I’m better,” Connor said from the doorway.

Fuck. Becker very slowly turned on his heels until he faced right. Connor was standing in the threshold, holding the tarpaulin out of his way with one hand. He walked into the room with his chin thrust forwards, and stopped by Howell’s elbow. He held out his hands, palms flat, and looked about him.

“See—funny thing about tarpaulins—I can hear everything you say if I just stand outside, right? And listen, so…that’s what I did,” Connor said. “And I—”

“You bloody sneak,” Robb burst out, rocking forward. Okri reached out and tugged him back a step. “Who told you it was all right to go listening at doors?”

“Who told you it was all right to start plotting…military _coups_ that involve the people I care about without consulting me?” Connor yelled right back.

Becker blinked, surprised. “I did, actually,” he said.

Connor’s face whipped towards him. He pushed his hat up his forehead one-handed and jabbed his finger at Becker with the other. His eyes were showing white, eyebrows raised to his hairline.

“Right there,” he said. “Right there, no secrets. I want that. I want to know what’s going on. If it’s Helen come back to…to finish what she’s started, or someone else, I am just as interested in saving my own arse as I am everyone else’s, yeah? This is my bloody _life._ ”

“This is a military matter,” Becker said, moving forward. He spread his arms out to his sides, and bit the inside of his cheek just as the scar below his ribs sunk its teeth into his nerve endings. Fuck, it was like he’d broken them all over again.

“I am the best hacker in the ARC,” Connor said, moving in close. “I was illegally downloading anime subs off Japanese television satellites when you were jogging round a track wearing a knapsack and shooting at paper targets.”

His breath hit Becker’s face, hot and a little sour. Becker found himself staring into Connor’s eyes and couldn’t yank himself free. His back rumbled dangerously as he tensed.

“You want to use that cheque?” Connor asked quietly. “Go ahead. See how quick you get red flagged, yeah? I can get you whatever you need, and no one…no one will ever know. I can build you a computer; I can build you an armoury. You just concentrate on keeping Abby and Jenny and Sarah safe.”

God, he was young. And stupidly brash, but if he was right…and fuck him bloody, Connor often was when it came to things he had no business in understanding…then he was the man for the job. Becker nodded his head, and Connor blinked, stepping back. Becker felt shock like a splash of cold water down his back. They’d been standing so close, his hair had got into Connor’s eyes. He felt…warm.

He jabbed his finger at Connor’s chest. His throat felt rough, like he’d been breathing in sand again. “You don’t say a word—not one—to anyone, right?”

Connor nodded jerkily, and shoved his hands in his pockets. Becker turned his back on Connor with a cough. The sergeants were blank-faced, but Howell’s expression was indecipherable.

“Pass the word to your teams,” Becker said. “They don’t need the particulars, but let them know how it stands as of now. Until further notice, Howell and I are attaching ourselves to ARC Two. Dismissed.”

Quietly, the sergeants left to start their rounds, taking Howell with them. Connor plopped himself right back on the floor, surrounded by the computer bits he’d been playing with when Becker had come in. Had it even been five minutes past? It felt like hours.

He eyed the slope of Connor’s bent neck. The thin, crumpled silk of his waistcoat was wet with sweat next to his scarf. The energy that had thrust him inside Becker’s office seemed to have sloughed off him like an old skin.

“Will it take long?” Becker asked.

He was letting Connor break the law for him. He was under a deadline, to be sure, but this…this was big. The PK couldn’t know about this.

“No,” Connor said, without looking up.

His half-gloved hands reached out and connected a wire protruding from a CPU to a green, plastic board covered in computer chips. Something beeped, and Connor twisted the wire again. He scratched behind his ear.

“I need my bag,” he said. “I need pliers.”

Becker backed away. “I’ll get—I’ll have them sent to you.”

He left. He was due to make a sweep with the men anyway.

 

***

 

There was a trick to functioning on fifteen minutes of sleep in a thirty-six hour period, and Becker found it was rather like riding a bicycle. You walked, you snatched your fifteen minutes, and then you moved again. It worked a charm.

At some point, the radio chatter cut out. There was no point in talking, barring the by now rote call and response of ‘sweep clear, sweep clear.’ The construction continued.

The builders swarmed the ARC like ants, shoring up this and painting that. He saw them pouring concrete into the walls, carefully ladling buckets of liquid stone around holes where steel bars still showed through. He watched the electricians rewire the fuse box at the junction where they’d found Inez Hancock with half a lighting panel in her stomach. The air smelled of turpentine and wet rock. His vision wavered and then calcified, just as it had in the mountains. He could almost taste the ozone.

He watched the builders, his own people, the civvies hurrying through the halls with their heads down. He watched them on CCTV when it was his turn in the surveillance room, and he oversaw them in person on his sweeps with ARC Two.

Dobson, ARC One’s medic, drew up a hydration schedule to keep up with the rate he dispensed the caffeine pills to the men. He kept the pill bottles on his person and doled them out to Sanderson and Clayton, the other medics, to serve to the rest of the team. When the medics cornered him on their hydration rounds, Becker did his stretches in the hallways under their watchful eyes. The scar tissue was stretching better, aging just like the doctors in Kabul had said it would.

His people made the builders nervous. Several times, the foremen dragged him into the PK’s office to complain. It never came to much. The PK encouraged it; thought it might make them work faster. Becker agreed.

They split the hours so that someone, somewhere, was always on hand for the construction crews to change over, and marked the days by that shift from night to morning. There was no rotation of personnel to off duty; he passed orders through Robb, walked with Okri, helped Khan shove caffeine pills down Howell’s throat. Howell didn’t like them, apparently, but Becker had made it an order. You took what gave you the edge, and they were thirteen soldiers keeping watch over more than one hundred civilians. Howell and DeBarge had it the worst, too, stuck in the chairs in the surveillance room more often than not. The new men hardly counted. He’d spaced them through the rest of the teams, using the buddy system to keep an eye on them. So far, not one had tried anything. In fact, they all seemed bizarrely subdued.

Corporal DeBarge fared the best of all of them, and put it down to her days sitting in anonymous vans in highly classified locations. She was used to a long stake out. Trooper Pierson fell asleep on the upper level, and had to be saved from toppling over the rail by Corporal Craig’s sudden lunge.

It was funny. The caffeine made him burn, made the back of Becker’s head prickle and his blood shake, and it was the closest he’d felt to normal in months. This he could handle, this zombie crawl in the guts of his ARC. Sometimes Connor ran up to him while Becker patrolled on the fourth level, and spouted technical jargon at him. Apparently, there was progress. Becker gave him permission to go through the files. He kept walking.


	3. Chapter 3

It was the final day. Becker could smell the difference in the air quality, the lights no longer flickered, and the construction crews were smaller, more familiar. The changes they made were cosmetic. They took less and less time to patrol.

He and Khan were down on the fifth level today, the part that dipped sharply and burrowed out to street level, right above the animal cages.

“Medics are stringing up IVs for the comedown, just in case,” Khan said. “Dobson’s running the infirmary like a little Mussolini.”

Dobson was an odd one. He’d done two tours in Iraq, now that Becker thought about it, embedded with a split force of SAS and Yanks where he’d learned some truly foul language. Becker kept finding him in the infirmary, counting out the morphine styrettes, and looking grim.

“Good man,” Becker said. “Don’t suppose those IV bags are filled with a good lager?”

Khan laughed, a shade too sharp for his regular mellow chuckle, but it suited the mood. Becker grinned. Getting off the pills was always a sod’s game. In the mountains, they’d tossed them back like sweeties, and it was a wonder he’d come down from the jittery high in hospital without heart palpitations.

“Becker? Becker!”

That was Abby. He stopped and turned in the middle of the corridor, signaling with the barrel of his rifle that Sergeant Khan should move on ahead. She ran up to him, small and quick, a bright yellow sweater falling off one shoulder. He blinked down at Abby, blinded by the sudden shock of her hair, her hummingbird hands fluttering in front of his face. She came up to his chest. Her eyes were perfectly, thickly rimmed in black.

“Jeez, it’s like Night of the Walking Dead around here,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Perfect,” he said, blinking rapidly. “Just on patrol.”

She paused, eyeing him like he was one of her lizards. Becker shifted his grip on the rifle. Unloaded, of course, but no one had to know that.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“Is something the matter?” she repeated. “You mean, other than you soldier boys walking around like grim death?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “And don’t call me that.”

She threw up her hands. “Ridiculous, he tells me,” she said. “Don’t be _ridiculous_? Look, I’m only here because your Sergeant Robb’s fallen asleep next to the Mastodon—again—and I told you before, I don’t want whatever…”—she poked her hand at his chest and then off down the hall where Khan had disappeared to—“this is to disrupt my animals.”

“Technically, they’re the property of the British government,” he said.

She grinned, a slash of bright teeth. “I’d like to see them try and prove the point.”

He sighed, and clicked into his radio. White noise burst into his ear, and he shuddered in reaction. He saw Abby frowning at him, but ignored her.

“ARC Three, this is ARC Zero,” he said. “ARC Three, please respond.”

A groan echoed down the line. “Wassit?” Robb mumbled.

“Alex, you idiot, get your fucking arse out of the Mastodon’s pen, and back on the line where it belongs,” Becker said.

“Sodding…fuck all, yes, boss,” Robb said, groaning. He yawned, lush and roaring in Becker’s ear. “I’m up, I’m up…”

Becker clicked off the radio, and smiled. Abby took a step back. “He’s leaving,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Yeah…” she said, eyeing him. “Connor’s looking for you.”

He squinted. “Really? Why?”

The light quality really was getting better in the lower levels, but it was still quite poor. Abby was…she looked almost grainy. It was hard to focus. Probably time for that pill he’d squirreled away.

He fumbled in his pocket for the tab, and popped it into his mouth, chewing it to paste while Abby wiped her hands down her back and watched him oddly. The civvies were so strange these days. Jenny had been off-limits for a week, either stuck in meetings with the PK, or holed up with Sarah in Cutter’s old lab, going through the professor’s materials.

“Connor wanted me to tell you,” Abby said, slowly, “that he has a shopping list.”

Becker swallowed. He blinked, squeezing his eyes tightly together and then opening them again. That caffeine rush could kick in anytime it wanted, that was for certain.

“Come again?” he asked.

“That’s what he told me,” she said, flinging one hand in the air. “He’s in your office, wherever that is, and he has a shopping list.”

“He’s eaten me out of house and home already?”

“What?”

Becker shook his head. His vision wavered, but settled. “He’s sleeping on my futon. How could he eat everything in my fridge so soon?”

“He’s sleeping on your futon?” Abby asked. “Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he’s tired,” Becker said, shrugging.

Abby paused. “Right,” she said finally. “I think I’m just going to go feed the animals now.”

Becker nodded. “I’ll walk part of the way with you,” he said.

Air puffed from her mouth. “Oh, you don’t have to,” she said.

He nodded, moving forward. “All right.”

 

***

 

He had a door. Becker carefully put his hand beneath the plastic plate with his name engraved in it. The plain grey metal felt cool underneath his palm. He had a door.

The door’s handle was smooth and solid, and turned beneath Becker’s hand like a dream. He pushed the door—his door—open and stepped inside his office.

Connor was sitting at Becker’s desk to boot, in front of a monstrosity of a machine. Was that what a computer looked like in Connor’s world? Becker had been thinking something more…contained. The monitor was buttressed on both sides by standing braces, connected to open bits of machinery by thin, wide, multi-coloured electrical cables. A large desk fan shot air over the whole mess, perched on the very far edge of his desk. Connor was sitting with his legs tucked and crossed beneath him in Becker’s chair, typing on the keyboard in his lap, with a pen clasped firmly in his mouth. He looked like a mad scientist during finals.

Becker crossed the threshold, and knocked the butt of his rifle against the corner of his desk.

“What the bloody fuck is this?” he asked.

Connor jumped, and his knees hit the bottom of the desk. The monitor rattled in its brace. He steadied it with both hands, long fingers curving over the sharp, plastic corners. The pen fell from his mouth, bounced off the keyboard in his lap, and clattered to the floor.

“Uh, what you asked for? I mean, before you…” Connor raised his right arm up and down quickly, palm flat against the air. “What exactly have you been doing? Besides scaring the living daylights out of the construction workers, I mean. I thought you were going on patrol. Did you know they’ve started going to the loos in groups?”

Becker felt his lips drag upward; the cool bite of air from the fan hit his teeth. “Yeah,” he said. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

Connor’s eyebrows made a break for the brim of his checked trilby. He glanced away, picking fuzz off the half-glove on his right hand and then his left. Becker wrinkled his nose. Connor really did wear a lot of clothing: trilby, gloves, waistcoat, a scarf… He wasn’t horrible to look at; Connor needn’t cover himself up.

Becker felt the caffeine pill start to shake his energy loose. His knees bent slightly, throwing his balance forward. He shifted left and began drifting towards Howell’s empty desk. Strange how Howell never left anything on the top of his desk. Becker always had stacks and stacks of files.

“Right,” Connor said behind him. He cleared his throat. “So, anyway, I’ve done what you wanted.”

Becker walked around behind Howell’s desk and came out the other end. He needed to keep moving. He aimed back to the wall where—holy hell, he had a back wall again, but they had kept that damnable poster. He squinted at the twat saluting behind the flag. What a git.

“Eaten me out of house and home?” he asked.

His feet took him away from the poster. He had to be on the sixth level in…soon enough, and if he stopped moving he’d be stealing some other poor bastard’s fifteen minutes of unconsciousness. Connor’s big brown eyes followed him as he walked, Becker could feel them tapping at the backs of his shoulders.

Connor snorted. Becker twisted on his heels to get him in line of sight. Connor’s eyebrows were still climbing for the hills.

“Don’t know what you mean by that, mate,” Connor said. “I’ve barely had time for a bap with the way I’ve been working for you.”

“I think Georgie has a cereal bar stashed somewhere in the nuthouse,” Becker offered. “I could find that.”

Connor paused. “No,” he said. “Um…thanks anyway, look, are you all right?”

“Of course I am,” Becker said. “Abby said you needed a shopping list?”

He walked down between his and Howell’s desk, watching his feet to avoid the extension cords Connor had dropped everywhere.

“Bollocks,” Connor muttered. “I didn’t say I _needed_ a shopping list,” he said more loudly. “Okay? I told her to tell you that I _had got_ your shopping list. Now, look, the thing about all these requests you’ve been making—you’ve got horrible handwriting by the way, it’s a wonder you managed to sign your name—but all the stuff you’ve been ordering is already stuff that the Quartermaster would normally stock anyway. It’s already been accounted for by their office, it’s just not getting to us, yeah? It’s going to the warehouse and sticking there. So, all we—”

Becker looked up at the sound of typing, craning his neck as he made another pass behind Howell’s desk. Connor had pushed his trilby up off his forehead, a red line bisected the space between his black hair and eyebrows. He was grinning while he typed, babbling all the while, a hunter tracking down his prey. Anime subs—whatever those were—beware.

“—well, I, really—needed to do was tell the manufacturers’ computers that the ARC _is_ the warehouse. Or rather, an alternate location for some of the Quartermaster’s stock. Wanna see?”

Connor bit his bottom lip, and then licked over the bright red indentations his teeth had made. He finished typing and stretched, raising his arms above his head, and groaning. Becker took a deep breath, and tried to keep focus.

“You convinced the weapons manufacturing companies that we’re a military supply depot?” Becker asked.

“Yes,” Connor said, dropping his hands to his lap. “It wasn’t that hard once I figured out your handwriting. I just had to get the router online and write a few programs. If you want, you can actually see what I’m planning for your armoury on this screen I’ve built here.”

Becker hummed agreement. His vision stuck, and then slipped along the curve of Connor’s jawline. That was nice. He rocked on his heels, tapping his fingers on the stock of his rifle.

With a grunt and a metallic screech, Connor swiveled the monitor facedown one-handed and crooked the fingers of his other hand in Becker’s direction. He breathed out through his nose sharply, and raised his eyebrows.

“You want to come over here, Becker? Because I’d like to know if I’ve got these numbers right.”

“If you insist,” Becker said.

He rocked forward, propelling himself to Connor’s side by sheer momentum. Damn tablet. He should have taken more than one. He patted his pockets: chest, hips, and thighs, digging through his utility vest and uniform, but came up empty. Shit.

“Becker…”

Connor was looking at him strangely. Becker left off searching his pockets, and leaned down next to him, shifting his rifle aside.

“Right,” he said, squinting at Connor’s hand where it held the monitor parallel to the desktop. “What’ve you got to show me?”

“Okay…” Connor muttered to himself.

He flipped the monitor back up to eye level, and, interlacing his fingers, cracked his knuckles. He began to type, and a sudden flurry of pages opened up before Becker’s eyes. Becker squeezed his eyes shut, and shivered. Connor continued typing—still muttering actually, though about what Becker hadn’t a clue. Becker cautiously let his eyelids raise, but averted his sight from the bright monitor. It was suddenly all very technical and there appeared to be graphs he was supposed to be reviewing.

It was…cute. That was odd, but then _Connor_ was pretty odd. He was two years Becker’s junior, but it was like Connor and he didn’t even come from the same species some days.

Connor was sweating. The edges of his black t-shirt and his purple scarf were slightly darker than the rest of the cloth. The clothes bordered each other, and parted when Connor bobbed his head, muttering under his breath about…something, shells? Shots? Something like that.

“You know, I’ve got most of the ammunition required scheduled for delivery tomorrow, but I’m thinking we need—is there any way you can send people to the lorry entrance on level five dressed like RAF servicemen? Because I’ve told this particular warehouse’s computers we’re a reserve airbase, and—”

Connor’s skin was very pale, like Gran’s best tablecloth, the linen one with the scallops around the edges she only brought out for Christmas dinner. When Becker had been a child, he’d wrapped the tablecloth around his hands, sliding his fingers against the harvest embroidery. It’d felt like silk, probably was, knowing Gran.

“Now, tomorrow, we should be getting a huge—enormous—load of shells for that big thing Alex takes with him to the anomalies, and I had them throw in a couple more of the actual guns because I saw that on your list as well. They’re also sending the gun oil in the morning, but I made sure it’s different trucks each delivery. However—”

The strip of flesh between Connor’s scarf and his t-shirt was damp beneath Becker’s fingers, but soft, smooth as anything, and _hot_. Christ, how did Connor stand that? How did he manage it with the fan blowing a gale, and the chill sinking into the walls underground? Becker was always cold these days.

“Whoa, whoa, um, whoa,” Connor chanted, and then his hand was wrapping around Becker’s fingers and drawing them back. “What exactly do you think you’re doing here, Action Man?”

Oh Christ, he’d been feeling up Connor Temple’s neck. There was a rushing sound in Becker’s ears, like waves crashing in the distance. Becker blinked rapidly, and shook his head. The noise retreated.

“Don’t call me that,” Becker said, automatically. “I’m a soldier, not a crap superhero.”

Connor stared at him, rearing back in the chair as far as he could go and still remain sitting. Becker licked his lips. Connor’s eyes flicked across his face. His eyebrows drew together, and then relaxed.

“You know a couple of mates and I once marathonned Star Trek right from “The Cage” to “All Good Things…” and on through “What You Leave Behind”?” he asked. “Barely stopped to order pizza. By the end of it, I couldn’t tell my Klingons from my Ferengi. Even today, most of DS9 is a complete blur.”

The computer Connor had made for him whirred softly to his right. Connor was still holding his fingers. His thumb was rubbing the little scar Becker had on his index finger, where a chip of rock had bit him on the rebound from a grenade.

“I have no idea what you’ve just said,” Becker said.

“How long have you been up, mate?” Connor asked.

Becker took a deep breath. His chest was starting to burn, a little too much acid in his stomach. He’d had nothing but coffee, pills, and crap food for three weeks straight.

“Only eight more hours to go,” he answered.

“Right, of course, so…”

Connor dropped his hand, and put both of his own hands on the desk, bracing himself as he stood up. Becker stepped back, fell back almost, and caught himself against the wall, putting a hand out for balance. Connor turned to face him, leaning back against the desk.

“There’s nothing you need to worry about here,” he said.

Becker nodded. He looked towards the open door—his door—and out into the empty hallway.

“I’ve got to finish my patrol,” he said.

“I’ve got it all in hand,” Connor said.

He stared at Connor, squinting to keep him in focus. Connor wrapped his arms around his chest, fingers tugging at his waistcoat. He bounced a little on his toes, and twitched his head towards the way out.

Becker pushed off from the wall, aiming towards the hallway. He was due on the sixth level again, where they were…buffing or sanding or…cleaning something away. He couldn’t remember, only that they were there and they were not to be trusted. Bloody civvies.

“Thank you, Connor,” Becker said, as he left.

His fingers tingled where they’d touched Connor’s skin. He shook them all the way to the sixth level, and then stopped because Dobson was giving him looks.

 

***

 

This time the entire ARC Special Forces gathered to see the back of the builders and electricians, an hour after the regular personnel had headed down the pubs. Honestly, Becker didn’t know who was happier: the fleeing reconstruction crews, or his people. He waited until the last builder was gone, hard hat in hand, and then gave the signal for Trooper Henderson to lock the doors.

A ragged cheer erupted at his back, and cut off abruptly as he turned away from the front entrance.

“All right lads,” he said, loudly.

Corporal DeBarge cleared her throat.

“All right, team?” Becker tried again.

Georgie settled back against her supporting wall near Corporal Sanderson, one of Dobson’s demonic medics, with a weary nod. The sergeants and Howell stepped forward, even the new one—Sergeant McMahon—from the Tunisian lot. Robb and Okri were leaning against each other, or well, Robb was leaning against Okri and Okri was letting him, staring a bit glassy-eyed over Becker’s shoulder. Howell was swaying gently on his feet with Khan at his elbow, and McMahon’s wispy black hair looked like a bird’s nest. Becker clasped his hands behind his back and clenched and unclenched his hands, trying to keep his blood moving.

He looked past them to the men, seeing the way they swayed in place, falling on each other to stay upright. Trooper Pierson was asleep on Corporal Craig’s shoulder. Corporal DeBarge was bracing Corporal Sanderson against the wall, jamming her slim fingers into his ribs to keep him upright. He seemed grateful for the assist.

“Sergeant Okri,” Becker said, and waited until Okri gave him the nod that he was listening. “You and your men have the next sweep. Take a moment to scrounge a bite, and then I’ll meet you out there.”

“On it, boss,” Okri said.

He elbowed Robb until the sergeant stood on his own, and then raised his hand, swirling his index finger in the air above his head. Craig’s elbow jerked backwards, and Trooper Pierson awoke with a snort. ARC One split off from the group, shambling towards the brand new rec room with intent to give it that lived-in look.

A sigh drifted up from the remaining teams, and Becker nodded. “ARC Two, Three and…let’s push the boundaries of imagination and call your lot ARC Four, McMahon, you’re dismissed for the next shift. If you start getting the shakes, or your temperature spikes, you are to go directly to the medics, who will be supplying the poking and prodding portion of detoxification in the infirmary just off the nuthouse. Otherwise, good job, and go give our new pits a proper look-in.”

The men departed, pushing each other back down into the ARC with jibes and offers to ‘carry you across the threshold, darling, but me back’s broke.’ Howell stayed put, still swaying, until Khan took him by the elbow and led him after the men.

“Have a good watch, boss,” Khan said, over his shoulder.

“I expect it’ll pass quickly,” Becker said, and followed ARC One’s path to the rec room.

 

***

 

He’d had no idea how much noise all that reconstruction had generated until he patrolled without it. The thrum in the air like a thousand generators pumping all at once was gone. His footsteps echoed in the silence. One of the night maintenance men passed him on Becker’s third sweep of the outer ring, but other than that he saw no one, and heard less.

A yawn bloomed in his chest and shot up his throat, cracking his lips open wide. He slapped his palm over his mouth on the tail end of its march, and followed its echo forward. The outer wing at night really was an excellent space for an echo. He hadn’t noticed before.

He walked down sector seven, leaning his arm on his rifle as he walked, and feeling the strap dig into his shoulder. He took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled, letting his head drop briefly. His weight started to fall back and he snapped to attention, face first. Dobson had locked up what was left of the caffeine pills in the infirmary. If he hurried, he might be able to pull rank and nab one before his shift ended.

“You know, this is not how I usually spend my Saturday nights, mate. I kind of feel like your mum.”

Becker whirled, drawing his rifle up to chest height and painting the sight directly onto Connor’s grinning face. Connor squeaked, and raised his hands. Becker groaned, and dropped his rifle down and away, pointing the muzzle at the floor.

“Connor, what are you doing here?” he asked. “We locked down the entrances hours ago.”

Connor held his identity card up next to his face, and smiled brightly. He tucked his other hand in his trouser pocket, and shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said, “but I’ve kind of got an in with the bouncer, you know?”

Becker blinked, squeezing his eyes carefully shut and opening them just as gently.

“What?” he asked.

“Dobson called me,” Connor said. “It seems that—since we’re flatmates now and everything—I’m supposed to take you back to your’s and pour juice down your throat until you beg for mercy.”

Connor shoved his security card back into his trousers, and yanked out Becker’s car keys. He waved them in the air. The keys tinkled against each other.

“Time to go off duty, Becker,” he said.

“I’ve got patrol for another…” Becker looked at his wristwatch, but the numbers on the face refused to settle.

“Did I mention the Wrath of Dobson?” Connor asked. “Because that is a very real, very frightening thing, let me tell you, and I have faced a Utahraptor in a food court. So, yeah, I think your mob’s got everything…” He smoothed his hand sideways through the air. “…well in hand. Come on, if you can make it to the front door I’ll even let you drive.”

 

***

 

A hand shook him out of a nice doze against a boulder, and Becker snorted awake. He lifted his head, shivering in the cold mountain air.

“My turn on watch, Andy?” he asked, eyes still closed.

“…Actually, I just don’t think I can haul you up all those stairs,” Connor said.

Becker slowly opened his eyes. He wasn’t in the mountains, kipping in between rocks. He was in the passenger seat of his hire car, sleeping with his head mashed against the seatbelt well. His door was open, his seatbelt was undone, and Connor was staring at him.

Shit. His tongue felt two sizes too large in his mouth, and wooly besides. He turned his head, and spat on the ground.

“We’re here?” he asked.

Connor nodded. Slate grey clouds loomed over his head. Maybe it would rain. Maybe the sun just hadn’t come up yet.

“Think you can make it?” Connor asked.

“Race you,” Becker said, refocusing.

He put both hands to the car frame and yanked himself upright. Connor backed up, hands in his pockets. He watched closely as Becker walked out onto the pavement, slamming the car door shut behind him. Becker focused on his feet, putting one in front of the other until momentum and inertia took hold. He made it to the front door of his building, and he made it up the stairs— Connor hovering like a bloody nanny the entire way—and finally, he made it into his living room.

It was dark. The blinds were drawn, and he thought he could hear tandem snoring emanating from his futon. Becker turned towards Connor and stumbled as the floor swerved beneath him.

“Whoa—okay!”

Connor grabbed him by the elbow, slinging his other arm around Becker’s back. His hand gripped Becker’s waistband, and Becker’s eyes slid closed, completely against orders. Christ, Connor was warm. He let his head fall back against Connor’s shoulder, and turned his face into the soft heat. It was so…

“Why do you smell like curry?” Becker mumbled.

“Because I had an actual dinner tonight,” Connor said. “Now, let’s try this again, mate, here we go…”

Connor pushed forward. Becker forced his legs to function as they were supposed to, with Connor half-carrying him. Heat—the wrong kind—flashed across Becker’s face. He grounded his teeth, and tried to shake himself out of Connor’s grasp.

“I can manage on my own,” he grumbled.

“I completely agree,” Connor said. “Hey, look! We’re here.”

On the next escape attempt, Connor let him go and then Becker was falling, freezing all along the places where their bodies had lately touched. His bed rose up to catch him.

 

***

 

He woke up with a mouth full of shit, and a pounding migraine, a siren blaring in his ear from the night table. He threw his arm out to the right, and slammed his hand on top of his alarm clock until the buzzer gave its last dying wail and went silent.

Shit, he’d gone to sleep in full kit, done up from his utility vest to his boots. His duvet was a wreck. How the hell had he fallen asleep still—

His bedroom door crashed open, and Becker flopped onto his back, rising up on his elbows to stare at Connor, standing in his doorway. Fucking hell, did he have to smile so damn much? Those teeth were bloody blinding.

“Morning, Hilary,” Connor said, grinning. “Drink this down, and get dressed…or re-dressed. I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?”

He tossed a bottle of blue PowerAde onto the bed, and disappeared. A warble rang out from the living room. Becker sat up quickly, wincing as his back scar protested.

Hilary?

Shit. Becker let gravity slam him back onto his mattress, and groaned.

 

***

 

Becker held on very tightly to his steering wheel, in case his hands decided to leap off at a careless moment and strangle Connor where he sat. The PK would have him murdered. Fuck, _the women_ would make him wish the PK had killed him.

“I cannot believe you went through my personal file,” he tried to snarl, but the yawn rather spoiled the effect.

Connor grabbed the half-empty bottle of PowerAde from the cup holder in between them, unscrewed the cap, and thrust it in front of Becker’s face. Becker jerked in surprise, and the car swerved in the next lane. A lorry horn squealed at him. He yanked the steering wheel to the left, averting sudden death, and glared.

“How was I supposed to know the difference between supply files and personnel files?” Connor protested. “You’ve got six different stacks on your desk.”

He waggled the sweating sports drink bottle, droplets of water flying off to land on the cuffs of his long-sleeved grey top and ugly maroon leather jacket. No scarf today.   
Becker pried his right hand off the wheel long enough to grab the bottle, and down the contents. His stomach gurgled, but settled as he swallowed. His heartbeat jittered, tying his veins into knots. Fucking pills.

“And so did you, by the way,” Connor continued. “At least I didn’t make little notes in the margins, _Hilary_. ‘Temple’s flighty, must keep on leash,’ how am I supposed to take that?”

“Lying down?” Becker suggested. He belched, tossing the empty bottle in the backseat.

“Oh, _shame_.”

“Who are you, my bleeding grandmother?” Becker asked, changing lanes.

“Language, Hilary,” Connor said. “Language.”

“How about this,” Becker said, yanking the steering wheel hard to the left and turning into the ARC’s carpark. “ _you_ don’t call me Hilary ever, ever again, and _I_ won’t let something nasty eat you at the next anomaly?”

Connor sucked in air, and clicked his tongue. Becker eyed him. Connor’s hands waffled in the air between them. He shook his head slowly.

“No, no, sorry Hilary,” he said finally. “I think I can manage the staying alive part well enough. That’s what I’ve got Abby for anyway.”

Bugger. Becker pulled into the nearest open parking space, shut off the engine and twisted sideways, bracing himself on the back of Connor’s seat. The back of Connor’s head thunked against the window as he leaned back.

“Well then,” Becker said, leaning in. “Let me put it this way: You forget you ever read the name ‘Hilary’ in a confidential military file, and I won’t bill you for the gigantic hole your Diictodons chewed through my bedroom door. Or that I’m missing a coffee table.”

Connor licked his lips. “Ah…you noticed that…did you?”

Becker nodded. He leaned back, unlatching his seatbelt, and opened his car door. “I noticed that,” he said, stepping out of the car.

Connor followed suit, scrambling out with one hand clutching the strap of his messenger bag. “What about your middle name, then? Can I call you Alan?”

“Do you have a death wish? Because I can make that come true for you.”

Connor rolled his eyes. He pulled a fresh orange PowerAde bottle—when had he bought the things?—from his bag, and tossed it over the car roof in Becker’s direction.

“All right, _Becker_. Fine.”

Becker caught the bottle in his left hand, and pressed the electronic lock on his key ring with his right. “Perfect.”

 

***

 

He and Connor parted ways on the ground level, and Becker detoured through the side corridor used by the maintenance staff. Below ground, five consecutive soldiers stopped him in the hallways to show him their fully loaded magazines. He made all the appropriate noises, and then walked to the armoury very quickly. He had to sign out his gear for the day, anyway.

Robb met him at the door. His red-rimmed eyes gleamed unhealthily above a thoroughly unsettling smile. Becker looked over Robb’s shoulder, and took a sudden, deep breath. His heartbeat thudded against his ribs.

He moved past Robb, staring at the wall racks. Gleaming, top of the line kit lined every spare inch of the racks. An entire wall of SPAS 12s shot above his head to his right, next to a descending line of HK MP5s and—fuck him blind, was that a—

“Boss, there’s a 40 Mike-Mike back here,” Robb said. “A real one.”

“I can see that, Sergeant,” Becker said.

“We could play G.I. Joe and pretend to be ineffectual,” Robb said. “Dibs on Cobra Commander.”

Becker skirted the MK19, and walked over to the nearest shelf, barely feeling the floor underneath his feet. Last night this shelf—most of the shelves—had been all but empty, not even a magazine left to gather dust. He felt his mouth drop open, staring at the stacked boxes in front of him now.

“We’ll never it get on the bloody SUV’s luggage rack,” Robb continued, “but find me an acetylene torch, and fuck me if I won’t try.”

Robb giggled. Becker chose to ignore it. He twisted the cap off his PowerAde bottle, and took a long gulp, just to give himself a moment to think beyond an intense urge to clasp the box of SSG shells for his Mossberg to his chest and never let them free.

“There’s about sixty fucking tons of bullets as well,” Okri said.

Becker looked to his left, his mouth snapping shut. Okri stepped out and around the shelf across the aisle from him, holding an open wooden crate. Okri nodded at him, yawning, and walked out into the staging area. He set the crate down on the ground, and crouched over it. Becker peered over his shoulder. The crate was full of flash-bang grenades.

“Are we just re-stocking, boss, or has the PK decided to invade France?” Okri asked.

“I could murder a croissant,” Robb said.

Okri held a flash-bang up for inspection, and smiled. The bags under his eyes must have weighed about six stone, but the re-stock seemed to have taken a burden off his shoulders. Becker could relate. He sank his weight onto his boot heels and into the ground, just to be certain he wasn’t floating and that this wasn’t a dream.

“Happy Christmas, boss,” Okri said.

“Fuck that noise,” Robb said, moving further into the room. “It’s the fucking eight days of Hanukah around here, and don’t you bleeding forget it.”

Okri snorted, and tossed the grenade.

Becker caught it one-handed, snatching the metal cylinder out of the air, and threw it back. “Do we have an inventory yet?” he asked.

“Is it all here? Did it work?” Connor asked, bursting into the armoury with one hand clamped to the top of his trilby. “Of course it worked, who am I kidding?”

Becker looked up at his entrance. Connor was staring wild-eyed at the wall racks, beaming. Robb bounced on the toes of his boots next to him, clapping his hands together. He caught Connor by the shoulders and spun him around. Robb stared deeply into Connor’s eyes. He shifted his stance, legs apart for balance. Connor glanced over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows in Becker’s direction.

“Now, Connor,” Robb said, drawing his attention back by the happy expedient of gripping both sides of Connor’s head between his monkey’s paws. “You bright, beautiful man—”

Becker frowned. Okri cleared his throat. Robb rolled his eyes, but he stepped away, dropping his hands from Connor’s head. Becker narrowed his eyes. Robb was suspiciously energetic for a man just coming down off three weeks straight of guard duty. He might just stop by the infirmary and have a look at their leftover caffeine tablets.

“Is it too much to ask for?” Robb demanded. “It’s just a _little_ tank.”

“You aren’t whoring for armaments,” Okri said. “Especially ones you don’t know how to use. We’ve discussed this.”

“That’s all right,” Connor said, grinning. “Pierson just tried to snog me on my way to check the armoury, anyway.”

“He what?” Becker asked, blinking rapidly. “I thought you were going to see about your artefact?”

Connor snorted. “Half of your mob ambushed me on my way into the lab, and Sarah’s not letting me near the thing until she’s cleaned it off properly.”

Damn scuttlebutt all to hell. Connor’s involvement was supposed to be kept quiet. If his people already knew about it, then the PK couldn’t be far behind. Becker glared over Connor’s head. Robb shrugged, raising and dropping his hands. Becker took another sip from his bottle of PowerAde, and rolled his eyes.

“Besides,” Connor said, loudly, “did you really think I wasn’t going to see a project through to its end? I’ll have you know, _Becker_ , that I am made of much sterner stuff.”

“I had no idea marshmallow had such strength of character,” Becker said.

“Is this a private moment, or can we all join in?” Jenny asked.

Robb whirled around, and Okri stood up from his crouch immediately, manoeuvring around the open crate and into the open. They both stood to attention, and Becker felt his own spine stiffen in response. He walked forward, angling his body so that the 40 Mike-Mike wasn’t, perhaps, so much in Jenny’s line of sight. Public relations tended to disintegrate once a mounted anti-tank machine gun came into play.

Jenny tucked her long, brown hair behind both ears with either hand, and smiled. “I’m not certain I want to know,” she said, “but I am glad to see you’ve got your armoury back, Captain. Lester would like to see you, actually, something about the amount of lorry traffic this morning?”

Connor made a quiet noise, rather like a rat escaping a sinking ship. Robb snorted. Jenny smiled. Becker sighed. He capped his drink, and tossed it to Connor, who promptly dropped it.

“Certainly,” Becker said. “I just need to sign out for my kit, and I’ll be on my way.”

 

***

 

This time, he wasn’t invited to sit down.

“Do you know what’s very interesting about today, Captain Becker?” Lester asked.

Lester clasped his hands together and stared, unblinking, up at him. Abruptly, Becker’s stomach contracted, squeezing acid up his throat. By any and all rights, it should have been Lester, seated at his desk, who felt small instead of Becker, but such was the life of an operational captain in ARC SF. Becker was almost used to the feeling of imminent fucking doom.

“No, sir?” Becker asked, coughing.

“Yes, I rather thought you hadn’t,” Lester said. “Because that, of course, would infer a thought process—a logic trail, if you will. Do you enjoy logic, Captain? Would you like to explore a syllogism with me?”

He’d shot a snake once, in the mountains, that’d stared at him in exactly the same manner as Lester was eyeing him now. Andy’d said it was poisonous, and then chopped off its head and roasted it for dinner anyway. Becker was rather uncomfortably aware that he’d left his SPAS 12 with Jenny in the anteroom to Lester’s office.

“Of course, sir,” he said. “I always enjoy a good learning experience.”

Lester’s flat blue eyes widened. “Oh, I am glad, Captain,” he said. “Now, let’s see, what day of the month is it? The seventh?”

It could have been the bleeding Ides of March, for all Becker knew. He’d lost count of the days during reconstruction. He jerked his chin up and down anyway.

“Good,” Lester said. “Do you know what happens on the seventh?”

Becker shook his head. He hooked his right hand around his left wrist behind his back, and stared over Lester’s head.

“On the seventh of every month, I have a meeting with my financial manager,” Lester said. “We chat, have a look at my holdings, go over any recent transactions, that sort of thing, and—today—I took a look at one of my Cayman Islands accounts.”

“Oh? Sir,” Becker said. He gripped his wrist more tightly, digging his thumb into the bundle of nerves between the two arm bones. He did not so much as twitch. Everything was a test, when dealing with the PK. Each word had three levels of meaning, and every hand gesture was filled with import.

Lester stood up, and walked around his desk. His voice sliced through the air like a whip crack. “Yes, I did, and I was very perplexed. You see, I went straight from that meeting—still perplexed, you understand—and then I came into an office under apparent _siege_ from a flotilla of lorries whereupon, Captain Becker, my confusion grew by absolute leaps and bounds.”

“Why’s that, sir?” Becker asked.

“Let’s sum up, shall we?” Lester began ticking off points on the fingers of his left hand. “I meet with my financial manager, and I look at my bank balance. I come into the office, and I see a great deal of new and expensive equipment.”

Lester slid closer to him, right up until Becker was breathing in the smell of Lester’s cologne. Lester leaned in, putting his mouth close to Becker’s ear. Becker held very still.

“What, exactly, have you done with that cheque I wrote you, Captain?” Lester asked quietly.

He’d stuck it in the sole of his boot until the ink disintegrated, and then burned it in his kitchen sink while Connor’s back was turned this morning. He’d blamed the ensuing smell of smoke on the toaster. He clenched his hand around his wrist, and then carefully relaxed his grip.

“After careful consideration,” Becker said, “I…determined that the risk of exposure on your end was too great to warrant use of the offered funds. I, therefore, achieved an alternate solution within a narrow time frame in order to speed delivery of needed specialised equipment, sir.”

Lester snorted. “Is that what they call it these days?” he asked. “Come across a jumble sale, did you?”

“Yes, sir,” Becker said. He felt his neck begin to stretch, trying to angle his head away from Lester. “I mean, no, sir, we simply employed an altered strategy to afford faster results.”

If anything, Lester seemed to take that as incentive to lean closer. Becker’s chest seized. This was the man who’d plucked him out of the training centre at Hereford. He could just as easily throw him back again.

“And how much did your alternate solution cost?” Lester asked. “Who am I going to have to suck off to keep these shipments under the radar?”

That was an image. Becker repressed a shudder. “I don’t think it cost much of anything, sir?”

“Really,” Lester said. “How remarkable.”

There was a highly significant pause. Then, he stepped away, and Becker held his position. He could see Lester in the corner of his eye, arms held at his chest, lips pursed in thought. Becker twitched, and Lester snorted.

“You’re a very interesting man, Captain,” Lester said, walking back to his desk. “I do believe I have a use for you. You can run along and play with your toys now. Send Jenny in when you go, I have a rather annoying biologist I’d like her to bamboozle.”

Becker turned smartly on his heel, and walked to the door.

“And Captain?”

Becker turned around, one hand clutching the door knob. “Yes sir?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t make any sudden large, personal purchases, if I were you,” Lester said, lifting his lips in what he probably thought was a smile.

Becker nodded. He opened the door and closed it, softly, behind him. He clicked his radio into the open feed.

“ARC One, this is ARC Zero,” he said. “I am back online. That had better have been the final shipment of the day I saw you fondling in the armoury.”

“Rabbit says that’s the last of it,” Okri said. “He put most of it on One Day Rush, anyway, whatever that means.”

“He’s in a state, isn’t he?” Jenny asked, standing away from the desk Lester’s assistant would have used, if she hadn’t been killed with ARC Two’s men.

Becker blinked. She had the strap of Becker’s SPAS 12 over one shoulder like a purse, her well-manicured hand gripping the stock. He nodded his head. Yes, Connor was definitely living up to his callsign, quick off the mark in every way, but…oh. Lester. He clicked off his radio.

“Absolutely,” Becker said. “In fact, I think—”

“Boss, I’ve got an intruder alert in sector seven,” Lieutenant Howell shouted over the radio. “Be advised: We have unauthorised movement in Sector Seven.”

An alarm bell began to shriek. Jenny tossed his rifle one-handed in Becker’s direction, and was already flying down the ramp to the nuthouse as he caught it.

“Roger,” Becker said, clicking back into the feed. “I’m on my way.”

He slung the strap of his rifle over his head, rechecked his mag just to grin at the bullets, and slammed it back home.

 

***

 

They had an evil mushroom running amok in the sewer systems—Connor had bought them _flamethrowers_ , he must have been working off Becker’s letter to _Father Christmas_ —that smug bastard of a detective constable had broken in through a fire door, and Captain Bloody Wilder was in his fucking ARC un-fucking-supervised. Barring the flamethrowers, Becker was ready to declare this day a complete wash. He wanted a pint and his bed, in that order.

“What do you mean, freeze them?” Abby yelled into her phone.

Becker glared down at his flamethrower. Make that just the pint. Or seven.

 

***

 

He managed to catch Jenny just as she left the nuthouse. She was still wearing her parka, carrying a duffel bag in one hand and holding onto her handbag with the other.

“Ma’am?” he called out, stepping into her path.

“Captain Becker,” she said, halting. “Come to make sure I don’t take the silver with me as I go?”

She raised her eyebrows at him, shaking her hair back, and Becker was struck by the way her eyes shone out from the tired lines radiating around the sockets. He stood to attention, hands clasped behind his back.

“I was hoping…may I walk you to the carpark?” he asked.

Her mouth compressed to a thin, white line, and then warmed, curling up at the edges. She cocked her head.

“If you like,” she said quietly.

He nodded briskly. “I would,” he said.

Jenny’s eyebrows rose. She glanced away, but when her eyes came back to him, she was still smiling. He felt his own mouth lift upwards in response. He relaxed his stance, and held out his left hand, palm up.

“May I take your bag?”

“That’s very kind of you,” Jenny said.

She placed the straps of her duffel bag into his hand, and began to walk forward again. Becker wrapped his fingers around the thin leather cords. He turned as she moved so that they were walking side by side.

They didn’t speak—there was nothing really to say—but she had been his commanding officer in the field. She’d kept him from dying once or twice, and he had returned the favour. He walked Jenny to her car, and tossed her duffel bag in the boot on her orders. As she pulled out of the carpark, Becker saluted.


	4. Chapter 4

He came back in through the side entrance, and walked down a level to the outer ring surrounding the nuthouse. The night staff had already taken over from the morning crew, paring down the population of the ARC enough to give his people space to breathe.

Voices reached him as he passed by the open double doors to the rec room. He stopped, and peered inside. Abby and Connor were sitting opposite each other at a table on the far end of the room, thick clay mugs in front of both of them. They seemed to be arguing about something, or at least, Abby was talking and Connor was nodding frequently in between sips of tea. Becker reached up and pressed his earpiece more firmly against his ear. He clicked his radio.

“ARC Eyes, this is ARC Zero,” he said. “Inquiry: How’s it looking tonight?”

“ARC Zero, this is ARC Eyes,” Howell answered. “Be advised: ARC Four has taken over from ARC Two. Sergeant McMahon is sweeping the lower levels now.”

“Tell him to pay special attention to the fire doors, ARC Eyes,” Becker said.

“Wilco,” Howell said.

Becker clicked off the radio, setting it to receive on the open feed. Brilliant, the Tunisian lot on their first unsupervised dekko. Howell couldn’t be expected to focus on the security team, as well as monitor the video feeds all night.

Becker grit his teeth. He raised his left arm up over his head and stretched, wincing as the scar on his side pulled at the skin on his ribs. He’d have to send Connor off with his keys yet again, and stick around until ARC Four was relieved by Khan’s team…who still had one of the new men tacked on to the original two. Fucking hell.

He walked into the rec room, and Abby looked up at the sound of his footsteps. She raised her arm, waving him over.

“It’s your turn,” she called out. “You live with him, you warm him up.”

Did everyone know Connor was staying at his flat? Scuttlebutt was a harsh bitch. At this rate, Helen Cutter was going to stop in for tea.

“I can’t help it!” Connor protested. “Now the adrenaline’s worn off it’s like…” he made a wooshing motion with his hands, tea sloshing in his mug. “…all the cold’s just come rushing back in.”

“Oh yes,” Abby said. “And while you’ve been acting pathetic in the rec room, we’ve missed our chance to say goodbye to Jenny. She’s probably miles away by now.”

Connor’s head ducked down over his mug. He took a sip, shrugging, and Abby groaned. Becker reached them, and stopped at the rounded edge of the table. He glanced down. An open sugar bowl lay between Connor and Abby, trails of granules fanned out across the table.

“I saw her off,” Becker said. “She seemed in good spirits.”

“Well, that’s great for you,” Abby said, “but it’s not the same.”

Her mouth lifted in a half-hearted smile, trying to take the sting out of her words, perhaps. Her eyes were tired, lids at half-mast. Becker put his hands behind his back, and shrugged. There wasn’t much to be said on the subject.

“You can always call her tomorrow,” he said.

“I suppose,” Abby sighed. “But still it’s…whatever.”

She stood up from the table, and snatched Connor’s mug from his hands. Connor jerked his head up at that, and made grasping motions after his tea.

“You want a top up?” she asked, putting her back to them.

She set down Connor’s mug, and grasped the handle of the electric kettle, popping the lid to check the water level. She sighed, and took the kettle off its base.

“Please,” Connor said. “And can I have it—”

“With two bags,” Abby said over him. “Yes, Connor, I know. Becker? Did you want something?”

“No,” he said. “Thanks anyway. I’ve got to go on patrol in a minute.”

“What’s to patrol?” she asked. “We just stopped rampaging fungi from destroying London.”

“It’s either that, or paperwork,” Becker said. “I know which I prefer.”

Best not to tell them about his concerns for ARC Four. Senior staff needed to trust their security. It was up to Becker to make sure that trust wasn’t misplaced.

“Paperwork? Still?” Connor asked. “I thought that was all cleared up.”

Abby turned on the sink, and stuck the kettle under the tap. “What’s all cleared up?” she asked.

“Just administrative duties,” Becker said. “Any anomaly warrants more paperwork then is strictly healthy.”

He turned his head to the side and glared, jerking his head in Abby’s direction. Connor’s eyes widened, his mouth opened and closed. He lifted both hands in the air, and turned his palms upwards. Becker shook his head, and Connor rolled his eyes. Becker cleared his throat.

“Which, in point of fact, is why I’m here,” he said. “I need to give Connor my keys.”

“What, again?” Connor asked. “You’re not going to start making me pay rent as well, are you? It’s practically my flat now. Mrs. Phoung next door thinks I’m you.”

Becker blinked. “What?”

Connor shrugged. “Well, she keeps calling me ‘Captain.’”

“Why have you been speaking to my neighbours?” Becker asked, leaning down to grasp the back of the empty chair next to Connor. “I don’t even speak to my neighbours.”

“Well, I see them in the morning in the hallway when I leave for work, don’t I? I’ve got to be friendly at least,” Connor said.

“No you don’t,” Abby said. “You just are.”

The kettle hummed to life, and Abby turned back around. She spread her arms wide on the bar top running flush against the rear wall, and leaned her arse against the cupboard. She crossed her legs at the ankle, and straightened her short red plaid skirt over her blue leggings. She pursed her lips.

“Oh sit down, Becker,” she said. “You look like you’re about to pass out. And stop frowning at me like that.”

“Like what?” Becker asked.

He stepped away from the table. Abby frowned. He pulled out the chair next to Connor, and sat down, leaning back carefully against the seat so he wouldn’t aggravate his scar tissue. Connor scooted a bit away, and wrapped his hands around his middle underneath his leather jacket. Becker eyed him. Connor did seem to be shivering a bit.

“Like you can’t believe I know how to use an electric kettle,” Abby said.

She sighed, and closed her eyes. Her eyeliner was crumbling. Becker could see black flecks sprayed across her cheeks.

“You’re Connor’s friend now, are you?” she asked, opening her eyes.

Becker put both hands flat on the table. Abby bit her lips together, something fragile in the way she looked between him and Connor. Becker shrugged, squinting a little to hide his wince. He really did need to start scheduling time for his stretches.

“He’s been staying at my flat,” he said.

“He’s not been in much,” Connor said at the same time.

Becker looked sideways out of the corner of his eye, and found Connor eyeing him right back. He looked away quickly. Abby raised one eyebrow.

“Really?” she asked. “How did this happen anyway?”

“My mate—the one I was staying with before—” Connor broke in before Becker could do more than open his mouth. “he had to get his flat fumigated. Cockroaches, you know?”

Connor tapped his fingers on the table in a quick rhythm. Abby frowned.

“Fine,” she said. “But then how did Becker come into the picture?”

Connor’s foot rammed into his ankle. Becker grit his teeth again. “It was just one of those things, I suppose,” he said.

“Exactly,” Connor said, leaning back a little and stretching his hands over the table. “And it’s only temporary…yeah?”

“Yeah,” Abby said, relaxing a little. Really, she was the most bizarre girl. “‘Course. Wait, cockroaches? Are Sid and Nancy all right?”

“They’re fine,” Connor said. “Not a scratch on them, in fact, and they love it at Becker’s. There’s all this new space to explore and…they’re fine. They’ve got the run of the whole flat.”

“They have?” Becker asked, turning in his seat.

Connor paused, and looked from Abby to Becker and back again. “Not in a bad way,” he said. “Just…in a way that is both healthy for their development, and respectful of other’s property.”

Becker set his arm on the table, and inclined his upper body forward. “If they’ve done anything to the engine I’ve been rebuilding, Connor—”

“They haven’t,” Connor protested.

“—That is an original _EB110_. I will personally yank every tusk—”

“Oi!” Abby exclaimed.

Becker twitched his head in her direction. The heavy eye makeup just accentuated her glower.

“Don’t be daft,” she said, pushing off from the bar top. “Diictodons can tell the difference between edible and non-edible items. They aren’t dodos, for Christ’s sake.”

Connor flinched, and Abby pursed her lips, looking down at her feet. Becker glanced between them, but no explanation seemed to be forthcoming. Behind Abby, the kettle switched off. Abby snorted, kicked at the floor, and turned. She picked up the steaming kettle with one hand and hooked three fresh mugs by their handles from the open shelf above her head. Becker pinched the skin of his nose and breathed out sharply.

“It’s just her thing,” Connor said, leaning into him a bit. “Animals, I mean. You get used to it.”

“Yes, thank you, Connor,” Abby said, raising her voice. “I’m just glad to see that my knowledge of animals is so well-respected in this outfit.”

More like Abby’s knowledge of Muay Thai. Her front kick made half of ARC SF green with envy. There was a running pool on who would work up the stones to invite her to their training sessions, but so far no one wanted to have her fall down laughing at Trooper Henderson’s attempts at emulation.

“Besides,” Connor said, shrugging. “I put it in the linen closet, remember? It’s all wrapped up in that groundsheet, safe as houses. You should thank me, that thing’s bloody heavy.”

“I’d just started on the bloody—”

Abby plunked three steaming mugs onto the table, cutting him off. She sat down, pulling the nearest cup towards her with one hand, and dunked the tea bag by its string with the other. Connor reached out, and raised the cup with two strings dangling over its rim towards his mouth. Abby reached out and nudged the open sugar bowl in his direction, flicking the handle of the sugar spoon around to point at Connor. A smile flickered across her face and jumped to Connor’s mouth. Becker looked away, warmth spiked across his cheekbones.

He was intruding here. This was the last of the original field team, of Cutter’s people, Captain Ryan’s charges. Abby Maitland and Connor Temple had outlasted them all. Becker remembered what that felt like, being the last two people standing in what seemed like the entire world. He cleared his throat, and scooted his chair away from the table.

Abby jerked, blinking rapidly, and Connor sat back in his chair.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “You haven’t touched your tea.”

“I’ve got to get back to patrolling,” he said.

“No you don’t,” Connor said. “Dobson was very, very clear on this subject. He said you were in no fit state to—”

Becker scooted his chair forward again. “I’m fit enough for active duty, thank you very much, or did you really just forget—”

“Oh God, Becker, just do as he says,” Abby interrupted. She rubbed her hand across her blonde spikes. “Dobson’s an absolute terror when he’s pissed off. If he thinks you should be in bed with a flannel wrapped around your throat, then you might as well get yourself on home.”

Becker snorted. “A flannel wrapped around my throat?” he repeated. “Am I in a Dickens’ novel, and no one’s told me yet?”

Connor chuckled next to him. “I think I’ll just go and get my kit from the locker room,” he said.

His chair scraped against the floor as he rose, taking one last gulp of tea before plunking his mug on the table again. He damn well winked at Abby like they were sharing some kind of secret, and turned, clapping Becker on the shoulder as he went passed. Becker felt the hit reverberate all the way down his spine, and a groan broke past his teeth. The reedy bastard was stronger than he looked.

“Are you all right?” Abby asked him, quietly.

Becker took a quick breath, and managed a smile. “‘Course I am,” he said. “Dobson’s just an old mother hen.”

“I’ve never noticed that,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “I did notice quite a few people hooked up to drips in the infirmary this morning, looking like something the cat sicked up.”

They’d cut down on the hydration breaks at the end there to save time. Post-mission fall out—not to mention Dobson and his pack of rabid medics—was a real bitch. He shrugged, and leaned back in his chair as far as his twitching side would let him. In his ear, Howell was telling McMahon to loop around the animal pens and check out the lorry entrance on level five. He’d have to check in with Howell later, they hadn’t had much time to conference in a while.

Abby set down her cup of tea. She leaned over the table, absently sweeping away loose granules of sugar with the side of her hand.

“Look,” she said. “if you want to play silly buggers with your health, that’s fine by me. You’re a big, tough soldier boy—”

“I really hate it when people call me that,” Becker interrupted.

Abby rolled her eyes, and spoke over him. “—who doesn’t want to hear when he looks like an unshaven wreck, but do me a favour, yeah? Take Connor back to your flat and keep an eye on him. He nearly died today.”

Becker sat up straight in his chair, snapping his teeth on the hiss that wanted to escape his mouth when his back muscles briefly seized. “He did what?” he asked. “When did this happen?”

Had there been something—he’d left ARC Two and Three on ARC security, what the hell had they been up to while he was away? There hadn’t been time when he’d got back to the nuthouse with the creature, but he should have been immediately informed of a danger to any member of the staff. Sarah hadn’t said anything to him either, and she’d been very eager to have his opinion on the latest anomaly readings the ADD had picked up.

Abby huffed, air escaping her mouth in short, staccato waves. “Are you kidding me? How’d you think Connor came up with the idea of freezing the spores, reasoned debate?”

Becker shook his head. “I…didn’t honestly think about it.”

He’d been around the ARC long enough to know that Connor never seemed to be listening, but he took in information like those spores had devoured Christine Johnson’s man, transforming raw material into solutions. It hadn’t really been a stretch of the imagination that Connor had come up with the winning answer once burning the fungus became a no-go.

Abby rolled her eyes, but her lower lip trembled slightly as she spoke. “The idiot got himself bunged up with the leftover spores in my horticulture lab.”

Becker took a breath. He raised his hand over the table. “Hold on,” he said. “Are you telling me that Connor tried to freeze himself to death?”

“Not to _his_ death,” Abby said.

She put down her tea mug, and shrugged, twisting the string of her teabag around her index finger. She was almost as young as Connor, wasn’t she? Funny, youth never seemed to soften her edges. Born kicking, as Gran would say.

“Anyway, it all worked out in the end,” she said. “Just…take him home and make sure he’s all right for the night. I’d do it only I’ve got Jack, and…Connor’s a little difficult to explain away, you know? I’ve enough trouble with Rex.”

 

***

 

Away from Abby and outside of the ARC, Connor’s energy drained out of him like someone had cut his wires. He shivered from the second they hit the carpark to the moment they got into Becker’s car. This time Becker didn’t have to crank the heat as high as it could go. Connor was already twisting the dial sideways into the red before he tucked his hands beneath his leather jacket again.

“Adrenaline, mate,” he said, stuttering a bit. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing, but when it goes…woosh.”

He leaned the top of his head against his side of the car, and jerked his left hand away from his body long enough to make a swooping motion over the dashboard. His toes beat a quick rhythm against the floor.

“So they tell me,” Becker said, pulling out onto the road.

Connor laughed, more air than noise, but Becker made himself grin anyway in response. He changed lanes at the junction and headed for the roundabout. Connor held his hands out over the air vents. His long fingers shook. The passing streetlamps made his fingernails look blue.

“Have to put up a good front, you know,” Connor said. “Well, suppose you would know, wouldn’t you? Being a war hero and all, only I suppose if you’re SAS then you don’t have to worry about putting on a face for anybody, usually. Do you? I mean, for the girls?”

God, he never stopped talking, did he? “Better not call them that where they can hear you,” Becker said, turning the steering wheel to the right.

Gravity had them both leaning as they circled the roundabout. Becker took the nearest exit, and felt his body steady itself once more. Connor remained slumped in the passenger seat. He grinned, showing his teeth.

“Oh no,” he said, “I’ve been very well trained.”

“Abby,” Becker guessed.

“Buffy, actually,” Connor said.

“Who?”

“Never mind,” Connor said, looking down at his fingerless gloves. “I suppose you’ve never heard of the X-Files either, or anything like that.”

Traffic at this time of night was half pubcrawlers and half nightshift workers pulling in ahead of the crowd. A flood of taxis quickly overwhelmed the lanes ahead of his Saab. Becker put on a little speed, trying to stay ahead of the pack.

“I’ve heard of the X-Files,” Becker said, changing lanes, and shoving two fingers into the air out his side window. The cabby honked at him.

“Oh yeah?” Connor’s voice rose a notch. “Do you want to watch it sometime? I’ve got the first three seasons—”

“I said I’d heard of it,” Becker said, glancing Connor’s direction. “I don’t watch much telly.”

Connor sighed, and leaned his head against the window. “Right, right,” he said. “Should have known. You know, I think I’m in the only secret project in the entire world where the geek to mundane ratio is in negative numbers?”

“How would you know, if they’re so secretive?” Becker asked.

Connor barked a laugh, and Becker startled, glancing away from the windshield. The heater suddenly kicked into overdrive, warmth pouring out of the vents. Becker took a breath. Connor shook his head. The corners of his mouth quirked upwards and fell back again.

The Saab was too good a car to let road noise penetrate the interior, but Becker heard a rushing in his ears all the same. He kept Connor in his peripheral vision, watching the way he seemed to bask in the heat and still shiver all at the same time.

“I do remember one episode,” he said.

Connor jumped, like he might have been dozing, but turned his head anyway. “Yeah?”

Becker nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “There was…Mulder? And his new partner, only they were looking for his old partner?”

“Krycek,” Connor nodded quickly. “He was brilliant.”

“It was good,” Becker said. “I caught it…I don’t remember when, but it was interesting.”

“That was a good episode,” Connor said. “We could…we could watch it later? If you wanted.”

The light in front of him was green, but the taxi two cars ahead seemed to be colourblind. Becker slammed on the brakes, bracing himself against the recoil. Connor did not, and rocked in his seat. Ahead of him, another taxi cab switched lanes, cutting off a Smart car. Modern nightlife in full swing.

“It might be nice to see that Speedo again,” Becker said, eyes still on the traffic.

There was a short silence. Becker’s stomach dropped.

“Oh,” Connor said.

Bloody motherfucking hell. Becker clamped his teeth tightly together, and raised his chin. The stupidest shit always came out when he was tired—and he was still tired, damn it all, and in pain, and Connor did not look much better, but it was crap timing. Really, really crap timing.

“Does…I mean…does anyone else at work…”

“Is it any of their fucking business?” Becker snapped.

The cars began to move again. Becker lifted his foot off the clutch, and the car began to move again. He chanced a look in Connor’s direction. Connor had rolled his head around on the headrest to stare at Becker in comfort. He hugged his middle tightly.

“No! I mean, no of course not, I just…it’s a surprise that’s all,” Connor said, his voice fading with every word.

“Really,” Becker said.

“Yes, really,” Connor said. “I mean, I guess it explains the hair…”

Fortunately, they had made it up to the junction just as the light turned red. Becker felt perfectly justified in stopping the car, and crowding Connor back against the passenger window. The gearbox dug into his stomach. He stared Connor down, sticking his face close enough to see Connor’s pulse jump in his neck.

“Oh brilliant,” Becker said. “Let’s just let the poof jokes begin, shall we? That’ll go down wonderfully.”

In the army, jokes that would get a man pilloried meant you were part of the team. Out in the real world, it was a different story all together. He wasn’t taking anything off Connor bloody Temple.

Connor jerked his hand in between them. Becker felt the heated tips of Connor’s fingers brush his t-shirt, and jumped. The back of Connor’s head thumped against the window. He licked his lips.

“No, really, it’s cool,” Connor said, shaking his head. “Preaching to the choir, mate, honestly.”

“How so?” Becker asked.

He drew back, easing back into his seat and away from the gearbox. Connor slumped against the car door. He licked his lips again, and swallowed.

“Well, I mean, Alex and Ray have been together for ages,” Connor said. He kept his eyes fastened to Becker’s, carefully peeling himself off the side of the car. “Ever since Alex came to the ARC, I think. They invited me to their anniversary party last month, only I missed it on account of that Stegosaurus near the M5.”

Becker felt his head jerk backwards a millimetre. Okri and Robb? He’d just thought it was incredibly bad timing for them to request that night off at the same time. Small wonder Robb had been giving him dirty looks when he thought Becker couldn’t see him.

“Right,” he said. “Of course.”

The light changed, and he drove forward. Connor settled back into his seat.

“I still want to watch that episode when we get back,” he said.

Becker closed his eyes briefly, and nodded. “Sounds great.”

They drove about a mile further in silence, the heater going full blast the entire way. Becker felt sweat begin to bead on his forehead, but it felt good, felt almost normal again. He let himself relax against the seat.

 

***

 

According to Connor, there was no way to truly understand the import of Krycek’s appearance without watching not just the second season episodes preceding the one Becker dimly remembered, but the first season as well. Becker was very tired. Connor got his way.

“All right, so this Scully person,” Becker said, waving his PowerAde bottle. “She’s a doctor?”

“Right,” Connor said. He took a deep draught of his beer without looking away from the screen.

“Then how come she hasn’t…you know, figured out that Mulder’s loony and chucked him?”

That got his attention. Connor twisted in his seat next to Becker on the futon, glaring. “Mulder’s not loony! Well, he’s not loony yet, he’s just…misunderstood.”

“Uh huh,” Becker said.

He shut one eye, and peered at the television screen with another. “Why is he in a field?”

“He’s looking for alien spacecraft,” Connor said.

On the telly, Mulder drove onto an airfield at night, through an apparent back entrance, to stare at fireflies in a profound fashion. God, it was like watching nerd pornography.

“This is the worst military security I’ve ever seen,” Becker mumbled around the mouth of his bottle.

Connor huffed a laugh, and went back to watching the telly.

Becker swallowed his PowerAde like a dutiful patient, and lowered the bottle. Connor had bought some sort of variety pack. Becker’d had four different flavours of sports drink today. As far as he could tell the only thing they improved was his sugar intake, but Dobson had sworn approvingly in Connor’s direction like Becker was in Connor’s _charge_ or something and that, apparently, had been that.

He watched the screen. It actually wasn’t that bad for a show about creepy crawlies. Mulder was as attractive as Becker had remembered, for one thing, and it was sort of funny watching Scully knock down all his ludicrous ideas one by one…although, Becker wasn’t sure that was the angle the show wanted him to take. He slid down on his futon, spreading his legs out in front of him into the space where his coffee table had been. The soles of his feet rested against Sid—or possibly Nancy’s—sleeping back.

“Did they eat it?” he asked.

“Eat what, mate?” Connor asked, still watching the telly.

“My coffee table,” Becker said. “I very clearly remember buying one and now…”

He’d liked that piece of furniture. It’d been cheap MDF, but the style had reminded him of the things Gran stored in the attic, solid oak pieces that his grandfather had loved.

“Ah, well, yeah, I guess,” Connor said, coughing. “Just the legs, but I thought it was better to throw it out than to have it splintering all over the place. Sid’s a brat when he gets something in his paw.”

“Not like dodos, my bleeding arse,” Becker grumbled, and swigged his PowerAde.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Connor flinch, just as he had in the rec room back at the ARC. Becker frowned, swallowing.

“You know…” Connor said, trailing off.

He took a drink of his beer, tilting his head back so that Becker could see the bob of Connor’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed. Light from the telly slanted across his neck. Connor lowered the bottle with a sigh, and sat back on the futon. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. His fingers looked bleached, curled into his palm against the dark knit of his fingerless gloves.

“I had this mate, right?” Connor said. “Tom. He was…we started the same year at uni. Met during orientation at a social for Science Fiction fen.”

Tom… Becker didn’t remember a ‘Tom,’ not in reference to Connor anyway. If it was important, then it should have been in Connor’s file. Becker licked his lips, and hitched himself up a bit, rolling his head across the back of the futon.

“Why didn’t you stay with him then?” he asked, raising his own drink.

Connor shrugged. He picked at the label on his beer bottle, pinching the sticky, mustard yellow paper between two fingers. He tore off a strip, curling it around his index finger.

“We used to have sex,” he said.

Becker froze, PowerAde halfway to his mouth. Connor didn’t seem to notice, content to rip at the label on his beer as he spoke. Ringlets of paper fluttered to the carpet.

“It wasn’t a big thing,” Connor continued. “Not like we were dating, or anything. Just…we lived together during school, and he was lovely and…well, then he met Duncan and that was bloody that. Couldn’t really compete with a ‘soulmate,’ could I?”

Connor shrugged, and made air quotes with his fingers, holding onto his beer in the crook of his thumb. He glanced up, telly light rebounding off his eyes. He rubbed his hand through the spiky tufts of his hair, and a corner of his mouth lifted.

“And then I got him killed, so…so…like I said, mate,” Connor said. “Preaching to the choir.”

Becker blinked. He set the PowerAde in his lap. He was drunk off exhaustion, that was his only excuse. Tom, Duncan, and Dodos; he’d been thinking of the wrong file.

“What about…I mean, Abby?”

The corner of Connor’s mouth dropped. He looked away, and frost crystallized in Becker’s stomach. He sat up, head coming off the futon.

“Look, I’m dead on my feet,” he said. “I’m not right in the head these days.”

Connor laughed, a short bark of a sound that raised the hairs on the back of Becker’s neck. He watched Connor lean back on the futon, and suck down the last of his beer.

“Hey, you never know when an opportunity will crop up,” Connor said, licking his bottom lip until it glistened. “I’m not particular. Besides, Abby is Abby is…Abby.”

He shrugged, but the way he said her name, as though Abby was name, title, and definition all in one go told Becker everything he needed to know on that score. Living in sin for a year and a half, indeed—and yet, Connor was on Becker’s couch because he was too difficult to explain.

Shouts erupted on the TV. Evidently Mulder had got over his sulk. Connor’s head whipped towards the screen.

“Oh, okay, you have to watch this bit,” he said, sitting forward. “This is so important.”

Becker looked down at his PowerAde bottle, and then up at the side of Connor’s face. The light from the telly bleached his skin, tripping shadows down the slopes of his cheekbones. He still looked young.

 

***

 

There was never enough time. He knew something was happening, Whitehall manouvering the ARC into danger, and Lester thrusting the ARC right back where he wanted it on the chessboard. Apart from ominous hints and meaningful glares in Becker’s direction, however, Lester wasn’t sharing the burden. All Becker had to go on were the sudden coaxing messages filtering down from the MOD that boiled down to the weather being beautiful in Hamman this time of the year, and didn’t Becker miss his old mates still in-country? So far he hadn’t been outright ordered to decamp, but then they _couldn’t_ order him out of the ARC, could they? His first day post-mission, he’d read the deal Lester’d worked out with MOD. It was…disturbingly watertight.

Becker pushed open the metal doors to the nuthouse, and paused on the threshold. Senior and midlevel staff swarmed the floor, carrying, cataloguing, or creating vast stacks of paperwork. As of the morning debriefing—Danny’s first official introduction, and hadn’t that been pleasant—the ARC was being audited, which was why Lester’s new assistant was currently running down the ramp from Lester’s office to the floor of the nuthouse in three-inch heels, with a mobile surgically attached to the side of her head. Becker blew air up at his fringe. Paperwork, it always came down to the paperwork.

Sarah had staked out a work area at one of the processing tables to the right of the ADD, and was currently slapping Danny’s hands away from some kind of clay pot. To Becker’s left, Connor and Abby were seated next to each other at one of the other processing tables, twin stacks of files at each elbow. Their heads were bent close, bodies turned inward. Connor’s left arm was resting on the table between them, fingers tapping the papers in the open file in front of them. The dense spikes of his hair shook as he spoke, bobbing his head to emphasize whatever point he was trying to make. Becker felt his side twinge a little, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Watch your six, ARC Zero,” Sergeant Khan said, over comms. “You’ve got incoming.”

Becker jerked his head up towards the upper level. “What?”

The sharp clack of stiletto heels on concrete was his final warning. Becker jumped aside just in time for Lester’s assistant to barrel past him on her way to the outer ring. The door swung shut on her distracted glare.

“Thanks for the warning, ARC Two,” Becker said, stepping further into the nuthouse.

“Think nothing of it, boss,” Khan said, and Becker could easily hear the thread of laughter woven in his words. “It beats taking odds on how long the Bill’s got before Sheba kicks his narrow arse out of the nuthouse. Any chance of time off for good behaviour?”

ARC Two and Four were stuck in-house until Becker could find the time to run the new men through their paces personally. Jones, Khan’s new sniper, looked like the MOD had lured him out of a cave in the Brecon Beacons with a hunk of raw meat, but he wasn’t ARC-ready as of yet. Hell, McMahon and his bunch barely believed that anomalies existed and with the ADD continually refusing to emit so much as a peep, there was no real way to test their field effectiveness. Special Forces didn’t really prepare a man for the realities of dealing with holes in the space-time continuum.

“Not unless you’d like to join Robb and Okri in the armoury, Sergeant,” Becker said. “That inventory won’t list itself.”

Well, more like, their inventory wouldn’t cleverly omit the obscene amount of weaponry, ammunition, and tactical gear they now possessed thanks to Connor’s diversionary computer programs by itself. ARC Three was under strict instructions to inventory only the items they had been officially granted, and ARC One was along to collect the real inventory they’d use in-house. Becker was running out of places to put the shipments. At least now they had ammo to spare for the gun ranges.

Becker walked towards the ADD, which Ms. Leyton, the morning crew’s ADD boffin, appeared to be using as some form of filing system. Printouts were spread across the keyboard and hung off the monitors in great loops of paper.

“I didn’t even know they still made printer paper like that,” he said, stopping behind the control chair.

“Believe it, Captain,” Ms. Leyton said, greying head bent low over a calculator. “Accountancy is its own special world.”

“I’ll take your word for that, Ms. Leyton,” Becker said.

“How very refreshing,” Ms. Leyton said, typing a quick sequence into her calculator.

Becker raised his eyebrows at the computer screens looming above their heads. Amazing how every single person he’d met at the ARC appeared to view conversation as a contact sport. Well, not Connor. He had no real filter—and sometimes no shut off valve—but he’d never learned how to bleed a man with a word.

“Oi, Soldier Boy!” Danny called out behind him. “Give us a hand, would you?”

There was a very clear, very emphatic silence over the radio in his left ear, but the delightful peal of Abby’s muffled giggling carried quite well into his right. Ms. Leyton cleared her throat, and shook her head over her calculator.

Becker turned to his left, and tucked his hands behind his back. “Is there something you wanted, Danny?” he asked.

Danny stood by Sarah, holding a cardboard box and grinning widely. “Now, don’t be like that,” he said. “We’re all mates here, aren’t we?”

Pity he was a berk. Those long runner’s muscles like Danny had were usually great fun in bed. Danny raised the box in his hands, and shook it. Something clanked. Sarah smacked the back of his thick ginger head.

“It’s just a few boxes,” she said, ignoring Danny’s exaggerated wincing. “Any chance you’ve got time to spare?”

She tugged on the corner of another cardboard box, sitting on top of the processing table. Her hair slipped into the collar of her ivory blouse as she tilted her head. When she smiled, her nose wrinkled and her eyes gleamed. Danny fidgeted beside her, trainers squeaking.

The ADD was not cooperating, not one ear-splitting chirp from the fucking thing.

“Of course,” Becker said. “Lead the way.”


	5. Chapter 5

Ahead, Sarah flipped her long, black hair off her shoulder and turned around to face them. She patted the lintel above her head, and pushed through the door to her new workroom. Becker nodded to Jones and Atkinson standing guard on either side of the double doors, and steadied Sarah’s box of very important, very old, junk, squeezing the crumpled edges of the cardboard box between his hands. He followed her into the room, glancing at the empty whiteboards bolted along the walls, and came to a halt at the edge of the already occupied examination table.

Danny followed him, whistling. Becker felt the muscles in his back shift and tense, and forced them to still. The PK had cleared Danny for all levels. He was team lead, now, and Becker wasn’t allowed to smack him.

“Are you sure you really need all these?” Becker asked, shaking the box in Sarah’s direction.

Danny cackled behind him, and came around to stand by his elbow. He set his box down on the table, and spun away, trailing his hand down the length of the table as he walked. Sarah looked up from unpacking her messenger bag, and placed her slim, brown finger along her nose. Her dark eyes twinkled.

“An archeologist never reveals her secrets,” she said.

Becker chuckled, and placed his box down on the table next to Danny’s. He stepped back and nodded at Connor’s artefact, still mostly covered in soot and grime, suspended lengthwise in the middle of the table between two clamps on either end.

“Still not finished, then?” he asked.

Sarah groaned, and shook her head. She leaned her elbows on the metal tabletop, and stared at the artefact. Danny’s head turned their way, blue eyes sharp enough to stab holes through the air. Becker frowned.

“Lord, no,” she said. “I don’t know how old it is, and I haven’t had time to see what the mass spectrometer does with my soil samples. Slow and steady is most definitely the way to go with this damn thing. I swear, I’ve had less trouble dating pottery shards.”

“You’re dating the artefact?” Becker asked. “I thought it was from the future.”

Sarah’s eyes briefly looked over his shoulder—checking to see if the door was firmly closed, no doubt—before she smiled and refocused on him. Sarah had taken very well to the security precautions he had drawn up for the artefact. It gave him one less thing to worry over. Becker crossed his arms over his chest. He leaned his hip against the table, and grinned.

Across the way, Danny stuffed his hands into his jeans’ pockets, and cocked his head. Becker felt his grin drop off his face.

“This is that widget you’re talking about?” Danny asked, jerking his chin towards the table. “The one the Guv was so keen on during the meeting?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, exhaling loudly. “And it _is_ from the future…or, as near as I can tell, it’s from the future considering the craftsmanship of the piece and the fuss everyone’s made about it, but I still want to cross every ‘i’ and dot every ‘t.’ This was important enough to kill for, wasn’t it? I want to make sure I’ve got all the facts before I turn it over to Connor.”

Becker straightened up from the table. “Has he seen it then?”

Sarah shook her head. “He pops his head in occasionally, asks if I’ve finished without actually naming what we’re talking about, and then rushes out again before I’ve said more than, ‘not yet.’ Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it, I could barely get him to hand the blasted thing over to me and now it’s like he doesn’t even care.”

Becker felt his stomach tighten. He shrugged, and unfolded his right arm to rub at the back of his neck.

“He’s got a lot to do,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll get around to it.”

Sarah pressed her lips together, and raised her thin eyebrows. The fine strands of her hair caught on her shirt collar as she shook her head. “Look, I know I’ve not been on the team as long as some people—”

“You’ve been on it about as long as I have,” Becker pointed out.

“And longer than me,” Danny chimed in.

“Yes, but that’s not really the point I was trying to make here,” Sarah said.

She bit her lip and turned her head to stare at the artefact. The light gleamed off the one end she’d cleaned down to the metal. It looked like copper to Becker, but what did he know? It was probably some futuristic metal-ceramic compound that only looked like someone had chopped up an old sailor’s telescope.

“Come on, Becker, you live with the man. Is he all right? Is this normal behavior? Because the Connor I knew when I joined the ARC would have been camped outside my door every morning on the off chance I’d finished the night before.”

Becker dropped his arms to his sides, and slid them behind his back. “Is that why you asked me to help you move?” he asked.

“Point of order, mate,” Danny interrupted, taking a step towards them. “I was the one wanting some help with the boxes, not our Sarah here. She was all ready to heft the load by herself.”

Becker glanced at Danny. He pivoted slightly, angling his body so that he could keep both of them in his sightlines.

“I don’t know anything more about Connor than you do,” he said.

Which was a lie, of course, but one he didn’t mind dishing out. He did know more than Sarah, maybe he knew something Connor hadn’t even told _Abby_ , and it…Becker didn’t mind that thought so much. Things—their interactions—had been different since Connor had told him about Tom. Some thing, some…boundary had changed, but damned if Becker could sort out what the fuck it was. It was like Connor had flipped a switch in Becker’ s head, and now he couldn’t shut off seeing a man, instead of a boy tagging along at Abby’s shoulder.

Sarah raised her eyebrows. She put her hands on her hips, stepping away from the table.

“Ah,” she said. “But you don’t deny you live with him.”

“And here I thought I had little Lord Boffin pegged as a breast man,” Danny said. “Don’t tell me I’ve got to reconceptualise my worldview all over again.”

Becker coughed. “He’s only staying with me until he gets his own place back.”

His place which was actually _Abby’s_ flat, but that…was neither here nor there.

Sarah pulled her hair out of her shirt collar, and laughed. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “If you listen to Abby talk, he moved in for a week and stayed for two years. You still haven’t answered my question though.”

“Search me,” he said. “He’s…he keeps busy around here. There’s that plug thing on the back burner.”

Becker rubbed the back of his neck again, scratching at his nape. This had to be the longest amount of actual bloody downtime he’d had since coming to the ARC. His morning security briefings with the sergeants and Howell actually began and ended mostly on schedule, if not on topic. He’d driven in _on time_ for consecutive fucking days, rather than being pulled higgledy piggledy from whatever spare moment he’d managed to secure for himself to convince some angry beast to go towards the light.

And, of course, when he drove into work, he drove in with Connor who fidgeted and talked over the radio and repeatedly changed all the settings and drank all his tea, and refused to make any sort of bloody sense ever.

It was sort of…cute. Which, as a bald statement of fact, made Becker want to hit himself very hard in the head. Connor Temple was in no way, shape, or form Becker’s type. He _cried_ for God’s sake. He created exhaustive databases on extinct creatures for fun. He believed in Egyptian curses and alien spaceships and, according to his file, had once stepped in front of an armed soldier to attack a gigantic centipede with a stool. Connor didn’t make sense.

Something snapped to his left, and Becker jerked his head towards the sound, one hand clamping down onto the butt of his pistol. Danny straightened up from the wall, holding his hands out. Sarah raised her eyebrows at him, pinched fingers in the air.

“Not that you aren’t a pretty picture when you’re thinking, Becker,” she said. “But I do have some work to do here, so unless you want to help me unpack my priceless relics…”

Becker nodded, and pointed over his shoulder. “I’ll just be going,” he said.

“I thought that might happen,” Sarah said. “I don’t suppose you could send someone in with a cup of tea in five minutes or so?”

“No drinking around the priceless relics,” Becker said.

Sarah leaned on her exam table and sighed theatrically. “Isn’t there something in your contract about protecting my welfare?”

“See, for that to be true, I would actually have to have a contract to begin with,” Becker said. “I’m more of a lifer.”

“I’ll get it,” Danny said. “Becker can show me the way to the caf, can’t he?”

Bloody hell. Becker raised his eyebrows. “Actually—”

“Fantastic,” Sarah interrupted, already pulling up a stool in front of the artefact. “Black, two sugars, ta.”

She snapped on the table lamp clamped to the exam table, and waved her hand towards the exit, already sizing up the artefact. Becker closed the door on Danny’s foot with a great sense of satisfaction.

 

***

 

Danny gave Jones and Atkinson a friendly nod as they walked down the hall, but didn’t seem to notice he’d called them ‘Henderson and Bennett.’ Becker rolled his eyes, and kept his hands firmly clasped behind his back. Danny was better than Wilder, Becker just had to keep that in mind.

“Right then, is this a secret projects tea lady sort of place, or are we strictly self-service?” Danny asked, clapping his hands together.

Becker glanced up at the light panels fixed above their heads. “Self-service,” he said. “We get the food, the ARC supplies the facilities.”

“That’s one way for the Guv to cut costs,” Danny said, sighing. “Can’t blame him, I suppose, this place looks like it’s held together with duct tape and hope once you get out of the control room. Still, never thought I’d miss the caf at my old nick.”

He shook his head, and put his hands in his trousers pockets, ambling along like they were on a side street in South London. Becker picked up his step, and Danny fell a little behind.

“We’ve actually just finished with reconstruction,” Becker said.

“That so?” Danny chuckled. “Can’t say much for whoever got the contract. What happened? A bomb go off?”

Becker grit his teeth. “Yes.”

He heard Danny’s footsteps still behind him, and then the quick shuffle of rubber soles on concrete. Danny caught up to him just as they reached the end of the passageway. Becker glanced his way.

“It’s not far,” Becker said. “Just ‘round this corner and further up the outer ring.”

He curved right, stepping to one side for one of the maintenance men coming the other way. Danny followed suit, turned sideways to avoid smacking his elbow into the wall. The man nodded to them as he walked past, holding his toolbox closely.

“Round and round the mulberry bush,” Danny said, but his voice was just a touch too flat for humour. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Becker clenched his right hand around his left wrist. “Never crossed my mind.”

Danny hummed to himself. Becker jerked his head towards the end of the hallway and stepped away from Danny. Danny grinned, suddenly, dopey and huge. He skipped up a step until he passed Becker and then twisted until he was walking backwards.

“Listen, mate,” he said. “There was something I wanted to talk to you about—just to get everything out in the open—seeing as how I’m supposed to be leading you into battle now.”

Wonderful. Fabulous. The man who stuck his bloody fingers in everyone else’s pie wanted to have a heart to heart. And he was Becker’s field commander.

“Of course,” Becker said. “Let’s just wait until we’re out of the hallway, shall we?”

Danny sucked his teeth, and Becker glanced at him. Danny shook his head, hunching his shoulders as they walked.

“Ah…see now, you _say_ that, Becker,” Danny said, cocking his head. “And, let me tell you, that toffee-nosed accent you’ve got going could rival the Guv’s, it’s a thing of beauty, but—and here’s the thing—that’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Becker halted, forcing Danny to a stop as well. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

Danny leaned against the wall, rangy muscles tensing beneath his thin cotton shirt. Becker took a step closer and let his hands hang loose at his sides.

“You’re a good soldier, Becker, but I was a copper,” Danny said. “I can smell rotten when it’s shoved under my nose, and let me just tell you, something fucking stinks in our digs. You mind telling me where the body’s buried?”

Becker’s palm brushed against his thigh holster, and Danny came up off the wall. He stepped into Becker’s space, using those few inches Danny had on him to loom closer. Becker stuck his chin out, and Danny grinned, not so dopey, but just as large. His eyes gleamed, hard as ice.

“Now I made you feel a bit of a wally when I first came here, didn’t I?” he asked, smooth as silk over a third degree burn. “I can understand wanting to get a bit of your own back, maybe even keep me guessing a few times out in the field, but I know what a siege looks like, mate, and this is it.”

Becker felt his lips pull back over his teeth. He set his heels into the ground, and kept his hands at his sides. “Not in the slightest,” he said, stalling for time. He hated this cloak and dagger shit. “You lasted undetected for a full thirteen seconds. If Jenny hadn’t given the word, I would have shot you where you stood.”

“Is that so?” Danny said. His eyes flickered across Becker’s face, one eyebrow rising.

Becker nodded, once. “That’s so,” he said. “And if I and my men hadn’t been coming off a three week watch, you wouldn’t have even got that far.”

Danny’s body swayed forward. Becker felt Danny’s breath slide across his cheek. He saw the pleased flutter of Danny’s pale lashes as his eyelids sunk lower. Becker licked his lips, and felt his back twinge as his muscles flexed.

“And why,” Danny said, quietly. “Would you need to go on a three week watch?”

A chill flashed through him, and Becker stepped back, clasping his hands behind his back. “We were overseeing reconstruction,” he said shortly.

Danny rocked back on his heels, arms swinging loose at his sides. He grinned, and Becker looked away. Ice wrapped chilly tendrils around his spine, spreading out along his ribs.

“See, because I’ve talked to Sarah,” Danny said, speaking up and Becker suddenly realised he’d been whispering—Danny had been fucking _murmuring_ into Becker’s ear all this time.

“You’ve talked to Sarah,” Becker repeated, and breathed in just a little bit more than was necessary.

Danny licked his lips and nodded. “And Abby,” he said, “when I can drag her away from her bloody pets down below. I don’t know about you, but the pong in those enclosures is a bit much for my delicate sensibilities. They, however, don’t seem to know any more than I do, the difference being—”

“That you’re a distrustful berk?”

Danny laughed. “Mostly,” he agreed, like they were just two blokes chatting in a hallway, passing the time.

Becker forced himself to stay right where he was. He needed to focus. Danny was team leader, but Danny was _new_. He was an unknown variable, and the PK hadn’t said word one to Becker beyond the fact that senior staff were to be kept on a need to know basis.

“Why haven’t you spoken with Lester?” Becker asked.

Danny shrugged. “Who’re you gonna look to for the truth: the man on the street, or the Whitehall mouthpiece?”

“I’m Lester’s man,” Becker said, and cleared his throat.

That was…for all intents and purposes that was true, but the words felt awkward in his mouth. He didn’t like to think much on it.

“Is that how it works in this outfit?” Danny asked. “Thought it was you and _Rabbit_.”

Something crackled in the back of Becker’s head. He rocked forward. He kicked Danny’s ankles apart, hooking his heel behind Danny’s knee, and yanked. Danny fell forward with a grunt, off balance, and Becker twisted him around, grabbing his right arm and forcing it up between his shoulders. Danny’s front slammed against the wall, smacking nicely on the polished concrete.

“I’m going to let you in on some key information,” Becker said, leaning close just to make sure every word penetrated that thick fucking skull Danny seemed so fond of.

“What’s that…mate?” Danny ground out.

He bucked against the wall, and Becker twisted his arm higher until he quieted down. He kicked Danny’s legs further apart, inserting his thigh between them.

“I am the operational captain of a frontline Special Forces unit currently operating as clandestine security on home soil,” Becker said. “You cannot sweet talk, cajole, or otherwise inveigle access to any information I may or may not be privy to. You haven’t earned shit yet.”

Danny hooked his chin over his shoulder. Red was slowly obscuring the freckles splashed across his face, the one eye Becker could see glared at him. “Saved your lot’s arses, didn’t?” he asked. “Think that was just a fluke?”

“Don’t know,” Becker said, smiling. “Stop dragging the pond for scum and we’ll see.”

Danny bucked again, trainers squeaking against the floor, and Becker let him go. He stepped back, watching carefully as Danny slumped against the wall, and then peeled off it, not even giving his freed arm time to get circulation going again. He turned around, rubbing a scrape on his jaw line, and eyed Becker right back.

“So I should speak to Lester,” he said.

“You should speak to Lester,” Becker said.

Danny snorted, and shook his head. “Well,” he said. “At least I know it’s not all good hair and fitted clothing with you.”

“No,” Becker said. “There’s also my government sanctioned ability to kill a large amount of people in a very short amount of time.”

“How do you explain all the tight t-shirts, then?” Danny asked.

Despite himself, Becker snorted. He breathed in deeply, and exhaled in a rush. “I look damn good in them,” he said.

Danny laughed, and stopped fingering the scrape on his face. He checked his fingers for blood, shrugged, and wiped his hand on his hip. “You know, I think I’m gonna like it here,” he said.

 

***

 

He had a wall clock again, a very striking, not at all military piece of red, plastic IKEA junk that Howell had salvaged from his wife’s last redecorating binge. Apparently, she was very much taken with modular design, but unable to come to terms with colour matching. Becker had nodded sagely when Howell had explained the crucial part the exact shade of red played in the feng shui of his and the missus’ living room, but blow him if it’d made any sense at all. Red was, well, _red_ , surely?

Although, maybe the colour was doing something feng shui-ish to his office, Becker wouldn’t know. Howell hadn’t been at his desk since 0800 when they’d installed the clock above that damned poster. Corporal DeBarge had the cold, and Becker had assigned Howell to cover her shift until Georgie could speak without sounding like a plugged drain.

Becker groaned, and rubbed the heels of his hands down his face. The fleshy, gaping maw of something large and scaly roared out at him from the monitor of his autopsy of an office computer. Connor’s choice of wallpaper really was macabre, but a certain dark humour lurked behind it that Becker hadn’t ever thought to credit him with.

Becker gripped the mouse in his right hand and double-clicked an icon on his desktop. The program popped onto the screen with a rumbling whirr from the piece of computer to Becker’s left.

He still had to finish his dratted reports. Long, dry, boring reports about ARC Three’s latest trip to the kill house in Surrey, and the amount of time Trooper Henderson was going to be in the infirmary, recovering from being blown out a window when Sergeant Robb had misjudged the amount of explosive needed to bust in the front door.

He slid the mouse forward, and clicked the pointer. The red seven landed on the eight of clubs, and he sat back to consider the line of cards spread across the monitor. He had red fours in two spots, but only one black five, and if he put the four of diamonds on top of that—

His door swung open, banged into the wall behind it, and rebounded into Connor. He whirled in a circle, slamming the door shut as he did so, and pressed himself against it, clutching the doorknob in one hand and holding down his trilby with the other.

“You have _got_ to hide me,” Connor said, gasping.

Becker stood up from his desk, snapping the strap holding down his sidearm.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

He reached up to press his earpiece into his ear. ARC Eyes hadn’t said a word since dinner, but if someone had disabled their comms, then—

“It’s Lester,” Connor said, coming off the door. “He’s gone mad. Seriously, I will polish your rifle, or categorise your bullets, or whatever it is you do when you’re in here, but just don’t let on that I’ve left the control room.”

Becker took his hand off his SIG Sauer and sat back down. He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You’re supposed to be there,” he said. “Recalibrating the equipment, remember?”

Connor waved him off, ambling over to Howell’s desk. Becker hurriedly minimised his game, and swiveled the monitor’s face to lie parallel to the desk. Connor pulled out Howell’s chair and sat down. He sighed heavily, leaning back and planting his feet on the desktop. Becker felt his eyebrows climb up to his hairline.

“I,” Connor declared, “have retuned the ADD so high that if an anomaly shows up in Sri Lanka we’ll know it before they do.”

“I’m sure we’ll all enjoy the plane trip,” Becker said. “But I am rather in the middle of something?”

He flicked his index finger against the monitor’s plastic frame, and rested his elbows on either side of the keyboard. Connor rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be quiet as anything,” he said. “Just don’t make me run diagnostics again. I’m this close to hooking the ADD up to the ARC’s internet and downloading the latest _Sarah Connor Chronicles_.”

“You cannot download porn to the ADD,” Becker said, frowning. “I won’t stand for it.”

Connor had an extremely abrasive, resounding laugh. He tossed his head back, catching his trilby as it threatened to fall off his head, and Becker felt his ears growing hot.

“Jesus Christ, Becker, it’s a television show,” Connor said, looking over at him. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Terminator? Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

Becker re-crossed his arms. “He’s in a television show?”

Connor’s feet smacked down to the concrete. He leaned across Howell’s desk, eyes glimmering bright with laughter, as he rested his elbows on the metal top. For some bewildering reason, Becker found himself fighting to stop his lips from arcing upwards instead of down. He glanced away, and coughed.

“Yes, well,” he said. “What are you doing here? Go hide in Abby’s lab, or something. I have work to do.”

“Oh come on,” Connor said. Howell’s chair springs screeched in protest as Connor whirled in a circle. “That’s the first place he’ll look! Give me some time away, mate. If it’s not Lester breathing down my neck, it’s Danny poking at me about past anomalies.”

Becker looked up at that, and felt his eyebrows draw together. “He is? Is he bothering you about…I mean, about—anything?”

He cut himself off, watching the light dim in Connor’s eyes. Christ, he was pants at this sort of shit. At the funeral, Andy’s wife had thought his injuries had given him a speech impediment.

Connor shrugged, grinning like the movement hurt him. He shook his head, rubbing the side of his neck with his hand. His fingerless gloves were dark red today. He really had very elegant fingers.

“Nah, he just…he wants to know everything, and what can I say? He’s team leader now, he’s got access to all the files. What does he need from me?”

Becker swallowed, licking his lips. “He probably…just wants to know what really happened. Files only tell you so much. Intel from the field is essential.”

Connor’s shoulders rose and fell again. He nodded and tapped a quick rhythm out on the desk. Becker shifted in his seat. He opened his mouth, but Connor spoke first, staring at the tips of his fingers and frowning.

“It’s not that I don’t understand why she left, all right? I’m not such an idiot that I don’t…that I don’t sometimes feel like chucking it all and finding out if the diploma Lester arranged for me is actually good outside the ARC. But she didn’t leave when it would have made sense—not when—when Stephen died, or the Professor—she left when we’d bloody _won_. And now there’s this copper in her place, and what are we supposed to do with D.C. Trust Me I Only Arrested You The Once? Is he going to slap cuffs on the next anomaly? Caution a T-Rex?”

Connor smacked the desk, and pressed his hands flat on top of the metal. He breathed in through his nose, and licked his lips, exhaling.

The leather casing of his side holster dug beneath Becker’s fingernail. He was gripping the butt of his pistol, index finger trying to slide down to the trigger guard. He let go without looking, and shook out his hand underneath his desk. No good alarming Connor.

“Have you…what does Abby think about this?”

Connor snorted, and shook his head. “She thinks he’s great—just what the doctor ordered, or, well, just what Jenny wanted and that’s just… _fine._ ”

Becker swallowed, shoving moisture down his parched throat.

“She did actually die that day,” he pointed out. “Danger is one thing, but dying makes most civvies take a step back.”

“I know that,” Connor said, and a laugh had never sounded so miserable to Becker’s ears. “It happens a lot around here, if you hadn’t noticed. But we brought her back.”

Connor’s voice faltered on his last word, and Becker felt his heart begin to pound, speeding his blood through his veins. Connor threw him off rhythm. Made him—he had the most bizarre urge to go over and sit down on Howell’s desk, and put his arm around Connor’s shoulders.

“Danny doesn’t seem all that bad,” he said for lack of anything better to say. “He’s good in a pinch.”

In time, he might even be able to train Danny up to be as much use to the team as Abby seemed to think. All he had to do was keep the man away from helicopters and climate-controlled labs. He was better than Captain Bloody Wilder any day.

It still killed him. That Johnson woman had brought Wilder into the ARC—into the bleeding nuthouse itself—to take Jenny’s position on the team. Something sharp and thick sloshed against the back of Becker’s throat. He watched Connor tap his thumbs on the desktop, rippling his fingers across the metal. He pulled a loose string from his fingerless glove off his right middle finger, and dropped it to the floor.

Fucking hell, Wilder would eat Connor alive. And any attempt by Abby to save some poor creature’s scales would end in one dead dino, followed no doubt by Sarah getting up a collection from the nuthouse to pay for Abby’s defense at trial, grievous bodily harm being a criminal offence, of course. Becker shook his head.

“It’s better than the alternative, mate,” he said, clearing his throat. “Trust me.”

Connor looked down at his lap. He licked his lips, and bobbed his head. “Yeah,” he said.

Becker slumped—only a bit—in his chair, and took a breath. His chest felt heavy, a weight pressing from his stomach to his collarbones. He’d never done well with the affirming speeches and rallying cries, and Special Forces soldiers were too smart to buy into that shit for any length of time anyway. Besides, Connor wasn’t under his command; Becker was just…responsible for him, for his safety.

“Did you know my predecessor at all?” he asked. “Away from work.”

Connor raised his head. His eyes were suspiciously shiny again, and Becker pressed his feet very firmly against the floor. He was not standing up.

“Captain Ryan? Not really,” Connor said. “He kept himself to himself, mostly. He and the professor used to go out for a pint now and again, sometimes Stephen too.”

“He was a good man,” Becker said. “A good soldier, I’m told. He...had a very long shadow and after his death, the sergeants followed his operational model in place of a command structure. It’s difficult, stepping into his boots.”

Connor was watching him. He had a look on his face, like Becker was a specimen to be added to his database maybe. Becker straightened his spine, and cleared his throat.

“Danny’s simply…eager to do well, to prove himself. I just—I think the PK thinks he’ll be handy.”

“Guess I’ll just have to get used to him,” Connor said.

Becker shrugged. He met Connor’s eyes, and leaned forward. “You can always hide out here,” he said. “Complain all you want. It’d make a change from hearing about Mulder’s family troubles.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like Blake’s 7 any better?”

Becker paused, and tilted his head. “Explain about Samantha again?” he asked.

A grin curved Connor’s mouth, small, but present, and some of the weight came off Becker’s chest. He thrust any uncertainty about that chain of events from his mind very firmly.

 

***

 

They made it to Lester’s office for the last meeting of the day with plenty of time for Becker take up position against the back wall. Becker preferred the comfort of his back against solid concrete over sitting down with nothing between him and the entryway but the open air. Connor, of course, had no such preference, and breezed by him to flop down in the chair at the corner of Lester’s desk like it had his name plate on the back.

He stretched his long legs out in front of him, and Becker could see he wasn’t wearing socks with his battered trainers. He eyed the red stripe curving beneath the knob of Connor’s ankle bone where his trainers rubbed the skin raw. He had very white skin. There was a rustle of fabric, and then Abby blocked his view.

Becker looked up as the others settled around the office. He noted Danny leaning on the filing cabinet, back to the window which seemed to defeat the purpose, and Sarah sitting down in the spare chair next to him. Abby sat down in the remaining seat across from Lester. She smiled at Connor, and dusted her hands off on her knees. Connor’s legs, encased in their tight, ratty denims, shifted across the floor. Becker licked his lips.

“Well, as long as you’re all comfortable,” Lester said. “I’m going to make this short. Due to a change in the political winds, as it were, I’m instituting the practice of evacuation drills for senior staff.”

“ _Evacuation_ drills?” Becker repeated.

“Sound idea, guv,” Danny said.

The PK raised his eyebrows, and leaned back in his chair. Becker shot a glare past his shoulder to where Danny lounged against the side wall of Lester’s office. Danny beamed at him.

“Yes, Captain,” Lester said, forcing Becker’s attention to revert downwards. “Danny here has raised some interesting points concerning the security of the senior staff in the event of an emergency situation.”

“Wait a minute,” Abby said, raising her hands in the air. She glanced at Connor, who shook his head at her, and shrugged. “Isn’t someone going to tell us what we need evacuating from?”

Lester paused, pursing his lips. Becker stood up from the wall, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. His heart rate picked up, a sly little extra jolt of blood in his veins. He hadn’t—he hadn’t liked keeping secrets from the team, he realised. Not that they spent much downtime together like a proper unit—like he and his men in Afghanistan—but it’d still been…lonely.

Connor turned in his seat, laying his arm across the back for balance and looked about the room. His eyes caught Becker’s and widened. “Does this have something to do with, um, the thing Becker had to do? Or the audit?” he asked. “And that woman from the Ministry? I thought that was all settled, I mean…”

He twisted, and gestured towards Danny. Sarah snorted. “Knew you were trouble,” she said.

“Oi,” Danny said, pushing himself off the filing cabinet. “It’s not always my fault, you know.”

“It’s not animal control again?” Abby asked. “I’ve told you before; the enclosures are perfectly sound for the amount of animals we’re holding. I just need a few more keepers.”

Lester rolled his eyes. “If the theorists are quite finished?” he inquired of the ceiling.

The team settled down, and Becker rocked back a little, resting his weight on his heels. Lester stood up from his chair, and came around the corner of his desk.

“The ARC, as you are no doubt aware,” he said, smoothing down his tie. “has been under a certain amount of stress lately. This…development has been the outcome of a difference of opinion in the ministry concerning how the project’s resources should be invested. Certain factions have decided that a more militarised approach—”

“Militarised as in dolphins defusing depth charges?” Abby broke in, glaring. “Just grab a Mosasaurus out of its proper time and let it swim for Queen and Country?”

“Or is it about the artefact?” Connor asked, sitting up in his chair. He licked his lips. “Do they think it’s a weapon?”

“It can’t be a weapon,” Sarah said. “It’s just a metal cylinder with angled glass inside it. There’s no power source, and no place to store energy that I can see. Besides how would they know? I’m only halfway through cleaning it.”

“And who are they in the first place?” Danny interjected, jabbing his hand in the air. “Are we talking the military? MI5? What?”

Becker stepped forward. “Sir? If I may?” he asked.

Lester raised his hands. “Oh, please, Captain,” he said. “Feel free to join the conversational circle jerk.”

A short, stunned silence descended. Becker cleared his throat. Connor blushed to the roots of his hair, and Abby wrinkled her nose at him.

“Well, now that everyone’s had a good chinwag, we can listen to what I have to say,” Lester said, rolling his eyes. “Evacuation drills. Ms. Chin from Processing will be in charge of logistics. As team leader, Danny will draw up a plan of action and implement it. Everyone is to attend, without exceptions, barring myself and Captain Becker. Now, get out of my sight. I have very important work I’ve been ignoring in favor of you people.”

Lester prodded Connor’s legs out of his way again. He walked back behind his desk and pulled out his chair, one-handed.

“Wait a minute,” Connor said, standing up. “Why not you and Becker? What’s the point of evacuating without taking everyone with us?”

“In the event that senior staff ever do need to evacuate,” Lester said as he sat down. “The Captain will be far too busy repelling invaders to chase after you four, and I would look ridiculous running for my life in Italian loafers. Now, I believe I mentioned something about you all getting out of my office?”

He flipped open a yellow folder on the top of his desk and made a great show of flipping it open and beginning to read. Becker moved towards the door. He pulled it open, holding it by the handle. The team looked at each other. Becker saw Abby taking Connor and Sarah’s measure as she stood from her chair. He could feel the weight of Danny’s gaze from across the room, and the flutter of Sarah’s already distracted frown teased his peripheral vision as Danny guided her to the door. Connor was still frowning at the top of Lester’s bowed head.

Sarah was the first out the door, and Becker could already see her mind was back on the artefact. She smiled at him as she passed, patting his upper arm. Danny raised his eyebrows at him. Becker shrugged. Abby was next, dragging Connor away with one hand wrapped around his wrist. Connor looked at him as he passed, and opened his mouth. Becker shook his head. Connor’s mouth closed, lips thinning to a stark, white line.

Becker rubbed his hand up and down the side of the door, and looked at Lester, still reading his folder.

“Sir,” Becker said, clicking his mouth shut on the word.

He didn’t know what to say, or what he’d meant to say in the first place. That ozone tang hung in the air again, and Becker wanted to snort, just to drive the stench from his nostrils. He closed the door softly behind him as he left, instead.


	6. Chapter 6

Connor showed up in his office after the meeting, standing on the threshold of Becker’s door with his arms crossed. He rocked a little on his feet, hunching his shoulders. Becker sat back in his chair, and breathed through the sudden vibration in his stomach.

“I can’t talk about it,” Becker said.

Connor nodded. “I just think—”

“I said I can’t talk about it,” Becker interrupted. “Why don’t you go and make yourself useful with that artefact, if you’re so intent on being distracting? I’m sure Sarah would welcome the company.”

Connor tilted his head to the side, and swallowed. “I just think it would be a waste,” he said, “to leave you behind.”

Becker shook his head. He couldn’t—he wasn’t touching that one, he wasn’t even thinking about it.

“I’ve got work to do,” he said, shoving his voice past his teeth.

Connor nodded at the floor, and backed out the door. Becker waited until Connor had disappeared down the hall, and then finished his reports.

 

***

 

Beside him on the futon, Connor shifted position again. They’d been back at the flat for five minutes and Connor had changed the channel seven times, evading Becker’s attempts to smack his hand away from the remote with alarming ease. The telly flickered and landed on Sky Sports News which dissolved into an advert for Virgin Mobile.

“You’re not half as fast as Abby,” Connor said, grinning. “You don’t hit as hard, either.”

He settled back against the futon, and drummed his fingers on his thigh, three beats behind the jingle on the telly. Compartmentalising was the order of the day, and Becker was beginning to have a healthy respect for Connor’s ability to shove everything out of his mind the minute their car pulled out of the ARC carpark. Becker could play that game if Connor wanted.

He rolled his eyes, and tried to arch his back subtly. His scar tissue was loosening up pretty well under Dobson’s fascist regime, but sitting down all bloody day wasn’t doing him any favours. At his feet, Sid and Nancy were playing tug of war with one of Connor’s fingerless gloves in the midst of the nest Connor had created for them out of his old sleeping bag and a groundsheet Becker had been using as a curtain. Some day he was really going to have to figure out how Connor told those two apart.

Beside him, Connor sighed and wriggled in his seat. He’d unbuttoned his waistcoat, and the dark leather panels hung loose over his tight black t-shirt. His jeans were worn along the tops of his thighs and knees, spread tight over surprisingly solid flesh. Becker made himself look away towards the television.

He was being foolish. He’d lived with other men in closer conditions than this. Hell, he’d bloody slept with Andy wrapped around him like a diver’s wetsuit for two weeks, but that was the military. That was bedding down with your men, because you were on the job and if the summer mountain weather boiled you during the day, it tried to freeze you to death at night. He’d never had a—a roommate before, as a grown man. It seemed like Connor was always just _there_ , in Becker’s space, throwing his clothes on the floor and over-indulging his pets.

He didn’t know where Connor fit, and it bothered him. Connor was easy—Connor was supposed to be easy. Quick to be understood, and simple to categorise. He was Abby’s something or other, Cutter’s annoying student, and now…

The channel changed again, flickering from a _Hex_ rerun to an advert for Robinson’s fruit squash. Becker thrust his arm to the side, eyeing Connor out of the corner of his eye. Connor squawked, and ducked out of the way. Damn.

“It’s my turn with the remote,” Connor said. “You already had it yesterday.”

“There was rugby on yesterday,” Becker said.

“I don’t care,” Connor said. “It’s my turn.”

“Who keeps track?” Becker said.

Connor waggled the remote in between them, dangling the plastic rectangle at Becker’s eye-level.

“My turn,” he said. “Besides, you get to drive everywhere.”

“It’s my car,” Becker said, sitting up and leaning in.

Connor reared back, shaking his head. A hint of red streaked across his cheekbones. He stuck the remote behind his back and leaned against the futon. He licked his lips, and his eyes skittered across Becker’s face and down his front before darting away to Sid and Nancy warbling to each other on the floor.

“It’s my remote tonight, mate,” he said. “You’ll have to get your fill of sweaty men chasing after a ball some other time.”

Becker swallowed, and took a slightly deeper breath than he’d intended. Connor glanced at him again, and Becker rolled his eyes, and slouched back to his side of the futon.

“There’s nothing on,” he said. “Put the disc in again.”

Connor grinned, close-mouthed, and began to hum. One of the Diictodons gave an answering trill. Becker paused. That…he knew that song… A laugh bubbled up his throat, and burst out before he could catch it.

“Bloody _Queen?_ ” he protested.

Connor laughed as he stood up. “And another one’s gone, and another one’s gone—”

“Shut it,” Becker said, and gave up trying not to grin. “You give Abby this much trouble?”

Connor blinked. His head wavered as he pushed his hand through his hair. “I try not to,” he said.

Becker sat up a little higher, and opened his mouth just as Connor spun away, stepping over and around the Diictodons. Connor’s back flexed as he flipped open the season two DVD set on top of the telly. He unsnapped the disc from the case, and then crouched down, both hands reaching for the DVD player stored underneath the television. His t-shirt rode up the small of his back, and Becker could see the knobs of his spine. He rubbed his fingertips together, and swallowed. He—when he’d been on watch—he remembered…Connor’s skin had been so soft. He was used to men who were calloused, worn hard and sharp, but Connor didn’t have an edge on him.

Connor crouched lower. His left arm moved, and the telly screen went dark, then light again as the disc loaded. Becker licked his lips.

“Did Lester really give you a diploma?” he asked.

Connor twisted, still bent in front of the telly. He cocked his head in Becker’s direction.

“Eh?”

“You said Lester had arranged for your diploma,” Becker said.

Connor’s eyes flicked up and down, and then to the floor. He shifted back onto his heels, bracing himself with his elbows on his thighs.

“Well, I suppose he did,” Connor said, as the corners of his mouth lifted and fell. “It wasn’t like—I was on my way, you know, I would have graduated, really, only there was this Gorgonopsid in the Forest of Dean and suddenly I’m…” He shook his hands in the air, stretching his fingers. “…indispensable. It’s official, I think.”

Becker rested his hands in his lap. “You think?”

Connor shrugged. “It’s in my records,” he said. “That’s good enough, I suppose. I think he had someone fake module results as well, because I’ve seen transcripts for classes I never took in my file. Turns out I was a model student after all.”

Connor sighed, and shrugged again. His hands curled around his knees. Becker crossed his arms over his chest. The by-now familiar electronic bong of the X-Files theme song vibrated through the air.

He hadn’t ever thought much about the senior staff. They were independent contractors as far as he’d been concerned, boffins in the mix for the thrill of live specimens. Jenny had left, it had stood to reason that any one of the senior staff could as well, but if Connor’s degree was only as good as a hacked university database? That—he wasn’t leaving, not unless Lester let him go.

“Well, not much out there for an evolutionary zoologist, is there?” Becker asked, mouth suddenly dry. “I mean…”

Connor laughed, and fell backwards onto the carpet. One of his pets squealed, and butted its tusks against his leg. He grinned, and cupped his hand over its head. Becker felt the corners of his mouth lift. He cleared his throat, and shifted against the futon.

“You go on digs,” Connor said, petting Sid or Nancy. He licked his bottom lip, shrugging. “Get up close and personal with rocks and fossils. It’s like a treasure hunt, only there aren’t—well, there are pirates sometimes, but not ones with parrots or peg legs, or anything like that. It’s the sort of thing I always thought I’d be doing by now, getting my hands dirty like Indiana Jones, or something.”

“Wasn’t he an archaeologist?” Becker asked.

Connor’s gaze seemed further away than Becker liked, but he chuckled. “Oh, so there are bits of pop culture you recognize,” he said.

“I remember Harrison Ford quite well, yes,” Becker said. “You might call him ‘paradigm altering.’”

Connor laughed again. “Was Han Solo for me,” he said.

Becker laughed, and twisted his upper body towards Connor. His scars bit down, yanking at his nerves, and Becker dropped back against the couch, sucking in a quick breath. He closed his eyes. He held his breath in his mouth, hovering in that space where he knew he had to move, but unwilling to submit to the bright flash of pain he knew was coming.

He heard Connor moving, coming closer, and the Diictodons snuffling at each other on the floor. Fingertips pressed down on his knee, and then fell away. Becker huffed, exhaling roughly, and grit his teeth as his scars settled back into place. He took a cautious breath, and then another, until he could trust his body not to rebel if he inhaled too deeply. He opened his eyes, and Connor was crouched in front of him.

“Time for your yoga, maybe?” Connor asked, licking his lips.

His eyes flicked from Becker’s face to his chest to his lap, and back again, a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows. Becker swallowed, and curved his hands over his own thighs.

“I don’t do yoga,” he said.

“Could have fooled me, mate,” Connor said, and a flicker of grin jumped across his face. “I’ve seen those print outs Dobson gave you, and every morning I hear a lot of grunting coming from your room.”

Becker rolled his eyes, and crossed his arms. Heat curled up over his ears and across his nose.

“Never you mind my grunting,” he said.

Connor laughed quietly, and stood, gripping Becker’s left knee for balance. Becker closed his eyes, and willed away the sudden rush of warmth spreading up from where Connor’s hand had touched him.

“Well?” Connor asked.

Becker paused, and leaned his head back to keep Connor in sight. “I’ll stretch later.”

Connor sat back down on the futon with a sigh, closer to Becker than he had been before. Becker’s skin prickled all along his left side. Connor snatched up the correct remote and pressed play.

 

***

 

It really hadn’t been fair of Dobson to ambush him on his way past the infirmary. All Becker had wanted was a nice cup of the good tea from the rec room to tide him over while he hid in his office from the biologists’ list of complaints. Danny continued to endear himself to the ARC, but he hadn’t yet figured out where Becker’s office was. Some days it paid to be crammed into the lower levels.

Connor had been taking up Howell’s spot all morning. He’d fashioned darts out of Howell’s paperclips, and that damn poster made a very effective target. The paperclips didn’t stay since it was only concrete behind the paper, but they made very satisfying rips. Now instead of ignoring his paperwork and technically destroying government property, he was listening to a mad Scotsman waving cattle prods in his face. He wasn’t paid enough.

“And all I’m saying—all I am fucking saying, boss, is if the PK wants to have a trauma-ready infirmary then he needs to get his ass in gear and start licking mine, because I am fucking done with this third world bullshit piece of crap defibrillator. Do I look like some fucking whisky tango Greenpeace twat, sir? Do I?”

Becker had absolutely no idea what crazed whale watchers had to do with this, but possibly Dobson didn’t either. He’d spent too much time in a blended company of Delta Force and SAS, and some days the dialects got away from him. Dobson smacked the paddles of said defibrillator onto an exam table, and crossed his arms, frowning so hard the ends of his brown moustache quivered. His green eyes practically snapped with outrage. The trick with Dobson was to pretend he was speaking to a Yank, only with more common sense. Becker scratched the nape of his neck, yanking out a tangle in his hair.

“Look, Corporal,” he said. “I can make another request, but until you can show something substantially more wrong with your equipment beyond the date of its birth, then I highly doubt either of us will get anywhere. And, please, refrain from commenting on either the state of the PK’s _arse_ or what you would like him to do to yours. I’m still quite tired, and sudden shocks upset me greatly.”

Dobson seemed to be working himself up to saying something else. He coughed. He crossed his arms, and kicked the nearest leg of the exam table.

“I don’t suppose Rabbit—”

“He’s not bloody Asda,” Becker interrupted, swallowing around the sudden constriction in his throat. “Make a request through proper channels or not at all, Corporal.”

Dobson’s mouth snapped shut. Becker put his hands behind his back, and clenched his fists.

“Will there be anything else, Dobson?” he asked. “Maybe you’d like to tell me how much you’re enjoying our anomaly-related injury dry spell? Has Trooper Henderson been taken off the antibiotics for his foot?”

“He starts PT with Sanderson tomorrow, and then we’ll see. As for…just one thing, boss,” Dobson said. “There’s been some talk, and Sergeant Okri referred me to you.”

Becker braced himself.

“Is it certain the PK’s replacing Cover Girl with the Bill?” Dobson asked. “Sergeant Robb heard it from one of the Tunisian lot was in the room next to the lockers when she and Mr. Wonderful were having a bit of a chat, but as we’ve been absent the action for about a week, I’d been hoping he was wrong.”

Ah. Becker nodded. He unclenched his fists behind his back. Dobson rubbed his thumb across his moustache.

“Fucking A, sir,” he said.

“Indeed, Dobson,” Becker said. “Fortunately, he’s not as much of a punter as first supposed.”

“He broke in through a fire door to get a job interview,” Dobson said. “I had three patients rip out their IVs trying to respond to the bloody alarm he tripped.”

“The PK’s put Danny on notice,” Becker said. “No more tripping the alarms or we’re authorised to use live rounds.”

Dobson grunted, but a pleased smirk broke free from the dense cover of his moustache.

“That’s good then,” he said.

“It is a comfort,” Becker said.

“What is?” Lester asked behind him. “Nothing too expensive, I hope.”

Becker turned on his heel, snapping to attention as Dobson did the same. Lester walked into the infirmary, letting the double doors swing shut behind him. He shot his crisp linen cuffs as he walked forward, flicking imaginary dust from the sleeve of his pin-striped suit. His casual glance took in the entire room from the rear view of Corporal Sanderson stacking boxes of gauze in the back cupboard to Dobson’s unloved defibrillator.

“Sir,” Becker said. “Is there something we can do for you?”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got the cure for the common idiot stashed away in here, have you?” the PK asked, clasping his hands together.

“If I did, sir,” Dobson said, “You’d be the first to hear of it.”

Becker rolled his eyes heavenward. He sometimes wondered if this was how the parents of toddlers felt all the time. A lesser man would have gone out for a pint and forgotten the way home months ago.

“How very reassuring,” Lester said. He arched an eyebrow at the exam bed. “Corporal Dobson, I see you’ve been practising with your equipment again. I am glad to see such diligence. After all, that defibrillator has to last us for quite some time.”

Becker bit the inside of his lip, hard, and watched Dobson’s moustache begin to quiver. He raised his eyebrows, and jerked his head towards the back.

“I think Corporal Sanderson needs a hand with the inventory, Dobson,” he said.

Dobson flushed a truly alarming red, and Becker suddenly had unpleasant visions of his next physical. With a sharp salute Dobson turned about and marched to the back cupboard.

“Always exciting to visit the infirmary, don’t you think, sir?” Becker asked, watching Dobson kick Sanderson’s ankle until the other man made room in front of the cupboard.

“Oh, definitely,” Lester said. “You know, his commanding officer in Iraq would have tied a bow around Dobson and sent him express if I’d asked? I picked him up for an absolute song. Now then, Captain, follow me. There’s a matter to be discussed.”

There went the darts game _and_ the tea for good. He followed the PK out of the infirmary, past the rec room and down the maintenance stairwells until they were well below ground level. Becker stayed at the PK’s elbow, and grit his teeth to avoid pestering the man. Connor was contagious, Becker’d never had such an urge to pepper his commanding officer with questions before he’d come to the ARC. Well, at least, he’d never had to struggle so much to keep his mouth shut.

“Where are we going, sir?” Becker asked, and immediately considered strangling himself with his own t-shirt.

Lester glanced over his shoulder. “Very good,” he said. “I wondered how long it would take you.”

Becker dug his elbow into his side, trying to press out the tension along his ribs. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“God, for a man with your record, I suppose I should expect this level of stonewalling, but I had hoped for some initiative as well. Anyway, it’s just down here. Away from eager listeners, as it were. Though, fair warning Becker, we might be married by morning if scuttlebutt does get hold of our little stroll.”

Lester stopped at the bottom of the stairwell, and opened the door leading out to the sixth level, where the oxygen filters had to work overtime to maintain the correct saturation level for Abby’s beasts. The air was thick. Becker coughed and breathed in slowly to get his lungs used to the feeling. Lester appeared unaffected.

The PK led him further down the hallway on the sixth level, away from the doors. His left hand reached out as he walked, tracing the det. cords connecting the slabs of C-4 taped to the walls. Becker stuck his hands behind his back to keep from smacking the PK’s fingers away from Khan’s work. They’d had a devil of a time just getting the C-4 in the first place without somebody bollocksing up all that hard work.

“Rather final, don’t you think, Captain?” Lester asked. “One wonders what choice language Abby used when your men set this up.”

“Sergeant Khan took notes, if you’d care to see them, sir,” Becker said. “But we can’t have the zoo getting out, if it comes to it.”

Lester nodded, just the barest tilting of his head, and dropped his hand back down to his side. Becker breathed a little easier.

“Is there something you wanted to show me, sir?” he asked.

Lester stopped, and turned to face him. He pursed his lips and shook his head. Becker came to a halt a yard away. The back of his t-shirt was starting to cling to his skin. The air was clammy.

“Do you know what makes the ARC extraordinary, Becker?” Lester asked.

Becker cast his gaze down the empty corridor ahead of them. The fluorescent light panels burned his and Lester’s elongated shadows against the concrete.

“The animals?” Becker suggested. “The anomalies? The information the scientists—”

Lester held up his hand, and Becker’s mouth snapped shut. “No, I’m sorry. My time is far too valuable to listen to you ramble; there’s too much work still to be done. No, Captain, the single most extraordinary aspect of the ARC is that there is no way on earth we should have lasted this long. No way at all.”

Becker felt his spine stiffen. He clenched his left wrist in his right hand. “What do you mean, sir? My people and I—”

“I am not speaking of you and your people, _Captain_ , since frankly, I’ve been culling the Special Forces herd for about three years and no one’s seemed to notice. What I am speaking of…”

Lester sighed. He rolled his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest, and shrugged.

“Miss Lewis’ departure was…untimely, but unavoidable. Danny’s investiture as team leader has gained us a certain amount of breathing space, but the ARC’s position remains in question. I find myself…in a quandary, and I am forced to involve you.”

Becker raised his eyebrow. “I’m honoured, sir.”

Lester snorted. “Yes, I rather thought you might be.”

Becker ground his heels into the concrete beneath him. Lester wasn’t the sort of man to confide in a subordinate, not unless there was a reason. Some event was in the offing, and Lester was looking for volunteers. He’d seen that politico song and dance before. He’d been shunted aside after Afghanistan, wrung out and strung out to wither in Hereford. Where would he end up—where would _his people_ end up now?

“Tell me about Captain Wilder,” Lester said.


	7. Chapter 7

Becker’s stomach tensed. He pressed his arms against his sides, and set his fists into the small of his back. Lester held up his left hand, and tapped his wristwatch with his right index finger.

“Captain Wilder, sir,” Becker said, “is an intelligent officer.”

Lester rolled his eyes. “How wonderfully informative. Please don’t tell me your choice of flatmates has sapped your ability to think logistically, Becker. And,” He held up one hand. “for the love of Christ, don’t pretend you have any room to prevaricate with me.”

Becker swallowed. “He is…politically astute and highly capable. He’s…”

“A man taken off active duty overseas ten years ago for reasons unknown and stuck teaching baby officers at Her Majesty’s best tommy mill. Yes, yes, I know all that, tell me about _him_ , tell me what sort of man links up with Christine Johnson. Does he want power? Does he want glory? Money? Does he think he’ll get any of that with her?”

Becker shrugged, and looked past Lester’s shoulder, following the connecting wire along the curving wall to where it pierced the grey block of explosive taped above the coiled firehose. He jammed the knuckles of his left hand against the grooves of his spine until the muscle wailed.

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Becker said. “I never served under him in combat. I had many instructors at Sandhurst.”

Wilder was a bastard—a ruthless one, who preferred the privileges of his rank to the lives of his people—but he was still a part of the same military as Becker. There were lines that Becker hadn’t crossed, even after everything; there had to be.

“Are you happy here, Captain?” Lester asked.

Becker clamped his hand around his other wrist. The near constant chill broke through to his bones, spiking icicles up his spine. Lester rocked back on his heels. Becker took him in, the sharp pin-striped suit that probably cost more than Becker’s flat, the silk tie and the starched collar. Lester’s hair was sticking up in tufts on the sides, as if he’d been running his hands through it.

“Well, Hilary?” Lester prompted him. “Because, by God, you aren’t the only SAS Captain the MOD is embarrassed to have brought back alive.”

A shiver threatened to erupt, and Becker locked his muscles in place. This man had taken him out of the training facility based on anonymous ‘recommendations,’ which couldn’t possibly have existed. He’d been buried alongside his men, right next to Andy, career-wise. Becker supposed he’d never stop owing Lester for that one single decision.

“Ensuring that the ARC regains adequate firepower in the field is one matter, sir,” he said. “I am fully committed to this project and the lives of its personnel. I am not prepared, _sir_ , to engage in unsanctioned political machinations against fellow officers and members of Her Majesty’s government. Wilder may be a boil on the MOD’s arse, but—”

Lester stepped up to him, and his eyes raked Becker from top to bottom. Becker felt like his skin was peeling back, shoving raw meat out into the cold, dense air. He didn’t back away.

“Captain Wilder is a means to an end, you idiot,” Lester said. “If you cannot understand the danger that Christine Johnson represents to this project, then you have never had the joy of seeing her eat the still beating hearts of her enemies in front of their goddamned loved ones on Christmas morn! Tell me that you haven’t decided to throw away the entirety of what you’ve begun to accomplish here out of some twisted loyalty to a man you seem to despise.”

Becker shook his head. “Sir, it is _absolutely_ not what I—there is nothing official that I can tell you.”

Becker stepped back and around, but Lester turned with him, stopping when Becker felt his back hit the concrete wall. He bit his lip.

“There’s nothing that would stand up in court,” he continued, breath shortening. “I _tried_.”

Lester inhaled deeply, tucking his chin to his chest, and looked up at Becker. “Do you know what I do all day, Captain?”

“I really couldn’t say. Sir,” Becker said.

Things appeared, new chairs, new men, all chucked out onto the floor of the nuthouse like Lester had just come back from the shops, and left them all there for Becker to sort out. If this had been a proper base there would have been departments, civilian hierarchies, protocols in place that didn’t require the military’s involvement, but no, it was only ever just Becker and whichever unlucky bastard he could rope into sorting things out.

Lester’s eyebrow quirked.

“I beg,” he said, and Becker’s chin jerked sideways. “I cajole, threaten, occasionally I call in old favours from people living on ill-gotten public gains, but mostly, Captain Becker, I come ‘round with my hat in hand and I _beg_ for the fucking scraps the Minister deigns to throw my way, and do you know why I do that?”

Becker shook his head. There wasn’t any _strategy_ that he could see, nothing but random attacks and false starts. And fuck him bloody, but Becker didn’t know what was going on more than five minutes ahead of schedule. He was tired of constantly being on the defensive. It felt like he was new all over again, when he was so glad to escape Hereford that he almost didn’t notice the trap closing over his head. He breathed in, sucking air into his lungs and resisting the urge to cough. He was a soldier, had never wanted anything else—didn’t now—but it was one more layer, one more guide that had worked everywhere, but where he was.

“Because someone has convinced the Minister that he could have more sweeties than is good for his waistline, and so he gives Christine bloody Johnson almost everything she asks for and—” Lester poked his finger upwards. “—if we’re not careful, he’s going to give her the very roof we’ve just managed to put back together again.”

Becker opened his mouth, and paused. The hair at his nape was prickling. He let his hands fall to his sides, and then put them behind his back again. Lester’s eyebrows lifted. He cocked his head, and breathed out through his nose. His cheeks hollowed and grew taut, and then relaxed. Becker gripped his wrist more tightly, and forced the image of Lester as an old man from his brain. You couldn’t see your boss as human, it ruined everything.

“Three years ago,” Lester said, so quietly Becker had to lean in to hear, “I was sent to corral a group of mad civilians who thought they’d found shiny holes in time big enough for monsters to come through. Since then, I have faced danger, death, and betrayal—sometimes all three from the same person. Quite simply, this is the most aggravating job I could ever have been given, staffed with the most inappropriate bunch of hardcases, crackpots, and only slightly mad geniuses to ever lurch their way across the British countryside. It is tiresome, it is complicated, it is unending and it is _mine_ , Captain. Do I make myself clear?”

At Sandhurst, Becker had learned to shut his mouth unless he wanted someone to shut it for him. In Afghanistan, he’d given his loyalty to his mission—they all had—and he’d lost every single man he’d climbed into the mountains alongside. Lester was the Pirate King, and he kept what he took. Lester had taken Becker, he’d taken Connor, and he demanded nothing short of the ruthless loyalty he gave in return.

“Yes,” Becker said, cracking his voice free of the ice choking his throat. “Yes to everything you’ve said. He wants it all, and he…he doesn’t like people who might ruin his chances—who he thinks are in line to spoil his chances, get to…whatever—his reward—before he can reach it. He wasn’t at Sandhurst because he enjoyed teaching. Scuttlebutt had him requesting transfers every year.”

He inhaled sharply and coughed, turning his head to the side. He was ARC Special Forces under the command of James Lester, and this was his life, do or die. He’d had commanders who couldn’t tell their arse from their elbow, and commanders who didn’t care if their men took knives into gunfights if it meant they could shine a medal on their corpses. Lester wasn’t any of those. He felt his chest warm, his muscles loosen.

“Really,” Lester said. “Fascinating. Now, tell me something that will cause her more trouble than he’s worth.”

Becker shook his head. “He’s got a mad on for toffs,” he said. “Anyone with a Home Counties accent might as well shrivel up and die before he gets to them.”

Lester’s eyelids drooped. His lips pursed.

“He has to be the best, you see, has to be,” Becker said, speaking quickly so that the words would escape before whatever remnants of the soldier he’d been lurking behind them could cut his throat. “He gets to you, gets all your secrets, everything you might not even know you’re scared of and then he holds it over you. He sets the bar high and makes you work for it until you like it and then he…moves it higher until you hang from it.”

“And did you hang, Captain?” Lester asked.

Becker felt his lips twist upwards. “I graduated, sir,” he said.

“Anyone not so lucky?” Lester asked.

“Sir William Delaney’s oldest boy,” Becker said.

“The cabinet minister’s son? The one who…oh, dear.”

Lester looked down, smoothing his tie with one hand. Becker glanced away and back.

“Yes, sir,” Becker said. “He was very bright.”

And very beautiful, with big black eyes and dark hair and a booming laugh you could hear across the room. Jack Delaney had been the perfect package, any company would have killed to have him wearing their cap badge. Captain Wilder hadn’t liked that at all. Some sorts of pressure not even the military prepared a man for, like the systematic removal of all sense of worth and nothing to replace it with.

“I see,” Lester said, and Becker snapped back to reality. “Well, Delaney’s old school, he might have gone with the cover up just to preserve the family name, but…I assume if names were suggested in his ear, it could get Nemesis back her wings?”

“Our instructors were very much of the same generation,” Becker said. “They put it down as a training accident to spare Sir William’s feelings. The inquiry was…a formality.”

Lester’s eyes narrowed. “And how did you pierce this veil of secrecy, then?”

“Hard to have a training accident in bed, sir,” Becker said. “Everyone knew.”

Lester was already rubbing his hands together, nodding to himself, deep in thought.

“Thank you Captain,” Lester said. “I’ll take it from here. Meanwhile, I’d say it’s time we worked ourselves up to seeing how the other side lives, don’t you think? Choose your people, pick out your favorite balaclava, and get inside Ms. Johnson’s HQ for a quick recce. Bring me back something special.”

Becker managed to nod his head, and turn around. His shoulders threatened to climb up his neck, but he forced his muscles to lie quietly. He walked back down the hallway, and put his hand on the doorknob. It twisted, the door opened with only a wheeze of noise from the hinges.

“Becker,” Lester called out after him.

Becker turned around, schooling his face. “Sir?”

Lester inclined his head. His eyes gleamed. “Trust the PK, will you?”

Becker felt his lips twitch upwards. Damn. “Yes, sir,” he said.

 

***

 

He didn’t go back to his office. Instead, he set his radio to receive only on the open channel, and walked up the service stairwell to the ground level and then circled the nuthouse for the entire circumference of the outer ring, dodging the civvie personnel and listening to his men going about their rounds. On his third revolution, he found himself outside the surveillance room, and went inside.

He’d expected Howell to be on duty—Georgie still being out with the cold—but the room was empty, just the rolling chair they’d scavenged from the same lab they’d commandeered Becker’s own chair from, and their rather pitiful double rows of televisions lashed to a rig they’d welded to a desk. Before the explosion, the ARC had been ringed with cameras, CCTV in every nook and cranny, but the blast had shorted their electrical system and fried the ARC’s monitoring capabilities. The reconstruction money hadn’t stretched far enough to get them back up to full coverage.

Becker pulled the rolling chair out from the desk, wincing as the wheels squeaked, and sat down. He carefully let his weight resettle as the support screw underneath the seat wobbled to a stable position. Above him, the screens flickered between camera shots, rotating through their remaining surveillance.

He twitched at a flicker of movement from Camera Two. He saw Howell walking down the fifth level corridor with a maintenance man, pointing out a ventilation shaft hanging off its frame. On Three and Ten, the in-house staff passed between the lab rings on the lower levels, a couple of the newer boys from Biochemistry were carrying seed trays down the hall. Pierson and Craig were skiving off their patrol on level Five, and heading towards the auxiliary mess with Henderson hobbling behind them on his cane.

Trust the PK. He had to trust the PK. Backing Lester was backing the ARC, and he had too much put into the old bitch to back out now, no matter how many of his people she’d ground into mincemeat.

On Camera Twelve, Robb and Khan were sparring in the rec room. Judging from the padding, they were using live weapons. They were both good men, as trained in stealth as anyone in ARC SF, but if this was an in-and-out job the best for the job was ARC One. Okri took an unholy delight in insertion. Besides, if he left Howell in charge then he had ARC Two, Three, and Four to keep an eye on the ARC itself.

Becker licked his lips, and let his eyes drift. Maybe they could re-task one of Connor’s munitions diverting programs to subvert a couple of electronic shipments this month. It wasn’t as if the Quartermaster seemed to notice, and if the PK wanted a recce done in enemy territory, he’d want the evidence to support Becker’s findings. He needed to get his hands on gear that couldn’t be traced; something that Christine Johnson’s pack of regulars wouldn’t know to guard against. Something positively wicked.

Becker looked down at his hands, turning them over to drag his right palm over his left. Something—a muscle—twitched faster in his chest. Connor could cobble something together to do that. He’d built all the other important gadgets around the ARC. Fuck him for being a rattled bastard, he should have gone to Connor in the first place.

On Camera Two, Howell and the maintenance man parted ways. Howell seemed deep in thought as he walked out of camera range. Becker frowned as he rose from his seat. He really did have to find the time to speak to Howell, the man was becoming a positive ghost.


	8. Chapter 8

Becker came down the corridor to his office in time to see Danny slipping out of his door, smirking. Becker’s feet slowed to a halt, his hand melded to the butt of his pistol, finger lying over the leather holster above the trigger guard. The skin on the back of his neck prickled. He opened his mouth to call out, but Danny had already turned his back to him, striding off in the opposite direction.

It was probably nothing. It was certainly nothing. Danny…Danny wasn’t a threat. Lester wouldn’t have taken him on if he had been, not even to escape putting Christine Johnson’s man on the inside. Connor had been waiting for Becker to come back before he’d been waylaid. He’d probably waited, and then got bored, and wandered off, leaving the door unlocked. Danny had finally found himself a map, and gone exploring. It was perfectly plausible.

Danny bloody Quinn had no business poking about in Becker’s office. A man could get hurt going where he wasn’t wanted.

A clattering bang resounded from inside his office, and Becker lurched forward, drawing his SIG Sauer. He made it to the closed door in seconds, and slammed his boot heel beneath the handle. The door shuddered, but held. He kicked a second time, and the hinges buckled with a shriek.

The door slammed against the wall behind it as he barreled through. Howell’s chair was overturned in the middle of the room, casters still spinning. Becker tracked his SIG Sauer upwards. Connor was plastered against the wall, hands raised, and his eyes wider than plates.

“Damn it, Becker, what is _wrong_ with you?” Connor yelled.

“Uh…” Becker’s mouth was open. He clamped it shut. “I—I heard a crash.”

“And so you decided to point—God, why do I even…”

Connor stared at him, fingers rubbing against each other in the air. He took a shuddering breath, and licked his lips. His eyes closed, squeezed shut, and then opened again. He took a step off the wall, and dropped his hands to his sides.

Becker blinked, and shook his head. The pistol’s muzzle wavered between them.

Connor’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I threw the chair.”

He waited, but Connor’s normal patter didn’t follow. Connor’s eyes lowered. He bent at the waist, and used both hands to right Howell’s chair, grunting a little as he raised it off the floor. The four casters clacked down onto the concrete, and Connor braced himself with both hands on the back of the chair.

“Did you finish…whatever kept you? Where were you, anyway?” he asked. “Not that I expect an answer, ‘cause let’s not pretend you’re interested in sharing information, or anything.”

Becker lowered his sidearm, squeezing the butt and feeling the rough slip guard grate against his palm. He breathed in through his nose, and tried to force the muscles in his back to stop twitching. There’d been a few too many stairs today. His throat felt parched, like cold pebbles before the sea beat them into sand.

“Actually, seems like I’ve been playing Twenty bloody Questions all fucking day,” Becker said.

Connor looked up at him through his heavy black eyelashes. He huffed, and his mouth curved downwards, bottom lip briefly disappearing beneath his teeth. Becker glanced away. He holstered his weapon.

Connor moved in Becker’s peripheral vision, putting his hands in his trouser pockets. His thumbs stuck out and through his belt loops, flexing against the worn grey fabric. He rocked on his heels.

“Danny’s been asking me questions about you,” Connor said. “And I’m getting fed to the back teeth coming up with ways to fob him off.”

Becker breathed out, deliberately. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Connor stilled, cocking his head, and a lump of ice solidified in Becker’s chest.

“Stuff like whether you talk about work to me,” Connor said, “or if you keep odd hours, and whether I’ve noticed anything strange going on with the soldiers. He keeps asking me how well I _know_ you, like we’re—like you’re hiding something from us all. And you’re not, I know you’re…I mean, I’m not the best judge of character…” Connor trailed away, and twin streaks of red shot across his cheekbones. “…obviously, my track record and everything, but I mean—I think if he was still a copper, I’d be requesting representation for our next meeting.”

“If he’s bothering you—”

“He’s not _bothering_ me, Becker, Jesus _Christ_!”

Connor paced to the right, throwing his hands up into the air. Becker turned on his heels to keep him in sight.

“Do you think I’m that _stupid_?” Connor asked, wheeling about to face him. “You don’t even want people to know your first name, and… Not that you’ve deigned to give me any scrap of information at all if it’s not related to how I can steal for you,”

“That is _not_ all I—”

Becker took a step forward, left arm outstretched, but Connor didn’t pause, didn’t back down at all.

“We’re not fools, you know, Abby and Sarah and me,” he said, “we know something’s going on—hell, _I_ know _you_ know something’s going on, but it’s sort of insulting, yeah?”

The words boiled out from Connor’s mouth like if he slowed down they’d burn him, and the ice in Becker’s chest splintered, driving frozen shards into his throat.

“The secure functioning of this building is not your concern,” he said, but Connor raised his voice and kept speaking.

“The scraps you and Lester have been throwing at us for bloody months make me sick. Ministry meetings, _politics_ , it’s all fucking bollocks, isn’t it? You just don’t trust us to—”

“Of course, I trust you,” Becker interrupted again. “Don’t be—”

“Then tell me what is going on,” Connor said.

Connor stumbled coming around the end of Howell’s desk, catching his hip on the sharp corner. He winced, but kept moving. He stepped up and into Becker’s space, crowding close until Becker could feel the brush of Connor’s exhalations against his cheek. They were enough of a height to each other to make looking Connor in the eyes easy, but Becker’s stare caught on the arch of his cheekbone instead.

“I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act, too,” Connor said. “You can tell me, Becker. Please.”

Connor’s voice cracked on the last word, and Becker’s arms jerked upwards, latching onto Connor’s elbows. Connor’s forearms came up, caught between their chests. Becker pressed his fingers deep into the muscles shivering above the hinged joints, and shook his head. Jesus Christ, Connor’s skin was burning. Becker glanced up, and was caught in the electric snap of his eyes, and the flush riding his cheeks.

“I’m under orders,” Becker said. “I don’t—it’s not like the PK’s told me any more than you, Connor, not the way you think.”

He was a smart lad, the smartest, and Becker could see the way the gears tumbled behind Connor’s dark eyes. Connor blew air through his teeth, pink tongue slicking over the red slash of his bottom lip.

“Bullshit,” Connor said. “That is utter and complete bollocks and you know it. Evacuation drills? Guards outside Sarah’s lab? Remember who you’re talking to, mate. I stole your entire bloody armoury for you.”

Fuck him, Connor looked almost proud. Becker swallowed hard, and shook his head.

“Damn it, Becker, let me help,” Connor said. “There is _plastic explosive_ stuck to the walls below our feet. This is my—this is my home. Nothing I’ve ever done has mattered as much as this place.”

Becker tightened his hold, and Connor swayed, just a little, just enough that the heat radiating from his skin taunted Becker’s chilled body. This wasn’t normal behaviour—not from Connor, not from _himself_ —but he didn’t know what was normal anymore, not really. It was all happening too quickly, the weight of the entire bloody ARC under his protection, and one person too many trying to get a rise out of him. Fuck if it wasn’t Connor who broke his back.

“I’m tired,” Becker said, and his throat tightened. “I’m just…I’m so bloody _tired_.”

“I don’t follow, mate,” Connor said.

Becker’s breath hissed out past his lips, hiccupping on a laugh. Connor shivered. His mouth parted, and Becker turned his head, letting Connor’s inhalation pull him forward.

Their lips met, slid apart on Connor’s startled twitch, and then connected again. Becker stopped, stopped moving, stopped breathing, caught. He hadn’t—he hadn’t ever seriously thought of this—not in the mornings when Connor rushed around their flat half-undressed like sin at Christmas, or during the day when Connor made up ridiculous games to pass the time, but Connor’s lips tasted like tea, and that was…Connor made a noise against Becker’s mouth, soft and surprised, and Becker’s body jerked forwards like he’d been prodded.

He stepped into Connor’s space, pulling Connor closer, and slipping a hand up to cup the back of his head. Connor’s fingers dug into Becker’s chest, twisting into his t-shirt, and then burrowing beneath it. He heard threads pop, but it was nothing to the long fingers scrabbling at his shirt, Connor’s heat sinking into his body, flaring along his skin.

Lush. He was sure Connor’s mouth was not supposed to be lush, to open so easily beneath his own. Connor was all brash moves and flailing limbs, couldn’t walk through a door if falling through it would work just as well. He should have been stuttering, strange and too quick, not sinking his teeth into Becker’s bottom lip.

Connor made a sound, low and deep in his throat, and Becker pressed closer. The inside of Connor’s mouth tasted like tea as well, a hint of sugar, but it was hot enough to scorch him. He moved to pull back—just for air, as a dizzy, lopsided spin roiled through his head—but Connor bucked against him, groaning, and Becker sank back for balance, spreading his legs, and sucking Connor’s lower lip into his own mouth. All he could see, taste, _feel_ was Connor’s mouth, Connor’s sounds, the surprisingly solid body against his own, like waking up from sedation and tasting food for the first time.

Footsteps smacked the concrete floor outside, and Becker threw them over to Howell’s side of the room. He twisted, dragging Connor after him until he felt the cold concrete wall against his back. Connor stumbled and fell against his chest, catching himself with both hands braced on the wall to either side of Becker’s head. He licked his reddened lips, gasping, and Becker snapped in Connor’s exhalations as fast as he could yank them down his throat. His cock pressed against his zip. He shuddered, feeling Connor’s hips twitch against his own, the hard line of his erection rubbing through their trousers.

“I’m going on a job,” Becker said, stupid with the heat flaring from Connor’s body, but he had to talk, and if it was only part of what Connor wanted to hear, then at least that was something, wasn’t it?

Connor panted. “Can I come along?”

Becker hiccupped his laugh, and watched Connor’s head tilt back. The long, pale arch of his throat begged to be under Becker’s mouth. He held tightly to Connor’s waist, and thrust upwards. He bent his head, catching the join of Connor’s neck and shoulder between his teeth and sucked. Connor froze, hard, flush against him, and then a full-body shudder wracked Connor’s body.

“I need…I need a recording device,” Becker said, swallowing. He rubbed his mouth over the Connor’s skin. “That’s why I was…”

He felt long, elegant fingers pulling his hair and the skin of his neck, gripping him tighter as Connor rocked up into him, and Becker thrust back.

“What’re…what’re you looking for?” Connor asked, voice rasping from low in his chest.

“Evidence,” Becker moaned against Connor’s skin.

He pushed away to grab hold of Connor’s shirt and waistcoat, dragging them up by their backs. Connor’s arms lifted so that his clothes could slip over his head, and then fell to Becker’s shoulders, fingers twisting in the fabric of his t-shirt. Becker threw Connor’s clothes out of the way. Connor’s trilby fell to the floor. Connor’s skin was flushed, his chest heaved for breath. His eyes tracked across Becker’s face, pupils blown, mouth a slick, red circle.

If it had been the work of a moment to conjure Connor’s diploma, how easy could it be to take it away again? How easy would it be to make Connor himself disappear? He’d been committed the second he’d put on the uniform, hadn’t he, when the ARC badge had fallen across his heart. He spread his hand over Connor’s cheek, and brushed his thumb against Connor’s lips. Connor’s breath stuttered. His mouth closed on Becker’s thumb. He swallowed, and the suction took Becker’s thumb deeper into his mouth. His cheek bulged, and Becker wanted to fit his cock into that space. His thumb slid free, dragging a slick trail down Connor’s skin. Connor’s hands locked into the collar of Becker’s t-shirt and dragged him forward, catching their mouths together.

“Yours,” Connor said, gasping as he broke their kiss, and his hands gripped the back of Becker’s head, holding him in place while Connor writhed. “It’s yours. Make it m’self.”

Becker shook his head. “Bright boy,” he said. “Oh God.”

Becker kissed the point of Connor’s jaw. He wanted Connor naked, wanted him spread out on the floor wearing nothing but sweat, all that skin pressed against him as they moved together. Cold—he was always so damned cold, but now Becker could feel the furnace of Connor’s flesh under his palms, blasting through Becker’s own t-shirt, and he wanted _more._

They stumbled, falling back, and Howell’s desk screeched across the floor. Connor tilted backwards across the top, and Becker couldn’t do anything but follow. He let gravity drag his own mouth down Connor’s chest, swallowing the salt underneath his tongue until his knees slammed against the concrete, and Connor’s belly was shuddering against his lips.

He kissed him there, nuzzling into the soft flesh, and pressing his nose against the wiry hairs underneath Connor’s bellybutton. He looked up, and Connor was watching him, his breath hissed through his teeth. His dark hair was sticking up in clumps. Red streaks rode high on his cheeks. Connor licked his lips, and Becker swallowed.

Connor’s hands cupped the back of Becker’s head, thumbs rubbing against the grain of the hair at the nape of his neck. He tilted Becker’s head back, and took a shaking breath. Becker gripped Connor at the knees, pushing his hands up Connor’s thighs, feeling every twitch of muscle until his hands were at Connor’s zip, and then the zip was coming down.

He was doing something, out of the holding pattern and into the fire, but it felt so _good_ to move—to do _anything_ and get an instant response. To touch someone and feel the weight of Connor’s stare as he did so. When was the last time he’d touched someone simply to—to feel them under his hands? He couldn’t remember; it was before the ARC, long before. He licked the line of Connor’s cock beneath his boxers until it popped free of the slit in the fabric and into his mouth. Becker sucked at the head, riding the bucking of Connor’s hips, and then dragged his tongue down the vein on the underside. Connor whimpered above him, hands shaking against the back of Becker’s head, not yanking—just like a good boy—but the impulse was there, the _promise_. Becker’s cock throbbed against his thigh, pulsing in time to the beating beneath his skin. He braced his right forearm against Connor’s lower stomach to hold him steady, and wrapped his other hand at the base of Connor’s cock. Becker opened his mouth, sinking onto Connor’s cock until his lips met his fingers and began to suck—no finesse, no tricks, just heat and wet and the weight against his tongue, thick and salty, like no other taste in the world. Connor mewled, hands yanking free of Becker’s head.

He heard them smack against Howell’s desk, felt the reverberations rock through Connor’s body into his own, the new angle providing Connor with purchase to thrust. Spit pooled in Becker’s mouth. He closed his eyes, and swept his right arm upwards, grabbing at Connor’s chest. He tried to remember the tricks he’d known before, how to suck, how to relax his throat, but then his fingers bumped over Connor’s nipple, and his nails dug into Connor’s skin above it, and suddenly Connor’s hand was fumbling against his, sliding around until their fingers were intertwined. Connor moaned above him, cutting off to bite at their clasped fingers, and Becker rode the thrust of Connor’s hips while he shook apart in Becker’s mouth.

Becker fell back onto his own legs, mouth gasping for air even as he swallowed, and Connor fell on top of him, sliding off the desk like he was made of putty. Their hands parted. Becker grunted, wincing as he supported their weight, but then Connor’s lips dragged along the seam of his t-shirt to the side of his neck and up to catch hold of Becker’s bottom lip. Becker’s hips jerked, cock throbbing in his trousers.

Connor’s hands fumbled at his belt, tearing past it, and dragging the zip half-way down in the process. Becker shuddered and kissed Connor, kept kissing him, while Connor’s hand worked between them, taking Becker’s cock out of his briefs and circling the tip in the cup of his palm, and then slicking his hand and dragging the liquid back down the shaft. Connor mumbled against his lips, pushing his tongue into Becker’s mouth and Becker let him, wildfire in his veins and an inferno against his skin. He wrapped his heavy arms around Connor’s back to hold him close, and came in Connor’s hands, with Connor’s taste in his mouth.

Becker slid sideways, falling to the concrete floor. Connor followed him, and settled on his chest. Above them, the ceiling was an unrelieved grey. Connor’s weight pressed down onto him, heat sinking past Becker’s t-shirt. Becker closed his eyes.

The grainy floor chafed against his head, cold leaching into him. He rubbed his arms up and down Connor’s back, trying to work the heat pouring off Connor’s skin into his own bones.

“You’ve got muscles,” he said, trying to fill the silence in the room.

Connor twitched against him. “Oi, a little less surprise might be nice there, you know,” he said, and his lips pressed a smile into Becker’s neck. “I’ll have you know I’m an integral member of a…”

Becker opened his eyes, angling his head to take in the expanse of Connor’s back, slick with sweat. He glanced up farther to the open doorway of his office, and the world shuddered into life.

“Fuck me raw,” he said, sitting up.

Connor fell to the side, and Becker grit his teeth against the sudden invading chill. His shirt was sticking to his back. He smelled like the cooling spunk dribbled across his thighs. He tucked his dick away and stood up, lurching to the doorway to shut the door. The lock was broken.

“Oh hell,” Connor said, and Becker barked a laugh. “Becker, I didn’t—”

“No, you didn’t,” Becker said. “This one’s on me.”

He swallowed, and wiped his face with both hands. His hands smelled like Connor. His mouth tasted like Connor’s skin. He was an idiot, a complete raving nutter. He’d heard footsteps, if someone had seen, they were—they were fucked.

Fabric rustled behind him. Connor grunted softly. Becker turned away from the now closed door just in time to see Connor’s chest disappear beneath his clothes. Connor’s head popped free a second later, hair a lost cause. The patch of skin at the base of his neck was turning purple.

“I don’t think anyone saw,” Connor said, zipping his fly.

Becker swallowed again, shivering at the ache in his jaw. His fingers twitched at his sides, twisting against each other to capture the heat escaping from his palms. “I didn’t—I wasn’t…”

Connor picked his hat up from the floor, and stepped towards him. “Wasn’t what?” he asked. “Becker?”

Connor stretched his hand out between them, and Becker wanted to lick his palm, suck the taste of himself off Connor’s fingers. He settled for not moving away when Connor stepped closer. He smelled like sex.

“Becker?” Connor asked, dropping his hand to his side.

Becker swallowed. He couldn’t do this here, not when there was still so much to be done. He’d…he’d wasted valuable time, just to… The heat pouring off Connor called to him, made his body want to sway closer.

Connor’s mouth was red, chapped at its fullest swell. Becker felt his eyelids lower. He took a deep breath and stepped backwards.

“I have to be able to record, store, and transmit a data burst through a heavily electronically shielded building that’s also embedded in layers of concrete,” he said instead.

“What?”

“Look,” Becker said, and it felt like he was cracking his jaw open just to get the words out. “I’m responsible for—”

“Is this about Christine Johnson?” Connor asked.

Jesus, it was like watching an engine turn over, the way Connor’s mind spun to life. He could tell the second Connor stopped seeing him, and started piecing together what Becker couldn’t tell him.

“Jenny thought she was hiding an anomaly in her building,” Connor said. “And I know she had some kind of variable frequency shielding, or…”

“I’m going to be late,” Becker said.

He reached out, and opened the door, stepping to one side. Connor paused. He blinked rapidly.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, and Becker couldn’t catch his eyes.

“I have a…” He had absolutely nothing, unless you counted tracking down one of the maintenance crew to fix his now-broken lock. Becker shook his head. “Look, can we…”

“What, can we talk about this later?” Connor asked. “Is that really how…I mean, is this…” He trailed off, but his hands pointed back and forth between himself and Becker. “Is this the part where I pretend we’re never met?”

Becker flinched, and didn’t even pretend to himself that Connor was holding himself very still, very carefully.

“What? No, I just—Connor, I can’t have these sorts of conversations here. I shouldn’t have even—”

“Kissed me, I know,” Connor said. “You’d be surprised…anyway, I should be going—” he chuckled uneasily. “Have to get to work on that transmitter you want, right? Is Georgie back yet? I think I could—I mean, she’s brilliant at bugs and things, has all sorts of aces up her sleeves and maybe…”

His shoulders were curving in on each other, and Becker wanted to force them back, but touching Connor now would just lead to more touching, and there had been footsteps. He was sure there had been footsteps outside his door. Connor was still in Becker’s direct line of command. This could all end very badly in the time it took scuttlebutt to run for a cuppa.

“No,” Becker said, too loudly. Connor startled, and Becker lowered his voice. “No, I just—I need this to happen later. All right? Can we just wait until we’re ho—at the flat?”

Becker put his hands behind his back. He licked his lips. His mouth felt swollen. Connor swallowed, pink tongue flickering out at the corner of his lips. The air stilled around them.

Connor nodded to himself, eyes darting off sideways into the middle distance. His hands were tucked into his trousers pockets.

“I think I can crack an existing recorder I’ve got in my desk,” he said. “Give me a few days? I’ll need them to recalibrate the strength of the data burst.”

Becker licked his lips again. “They’re yours.”


	9. Chapter 9

There had been footsteps outside his door. He’d just had explosive sex in his shared office with _Connor Temple_ , possibly seen by whoever belonged to those footsteps, and—and it was the oddest feeling, but he was—he was warm. He could feel heat beneath his skin, almost enough to chase the cold from his bones.

Becker slowed to a halt in the middle of the corridor. He shook his head. Ridiculous. He was standing beneath one of the air vents, that was all, and the maintenance men had finally got around to fixing the temperature controls. In fact, there was one now, just leaving the auxiliary mess, and wiping his mouth with a serviette.

Becker started walking again. The maintenance man—Tom, he thought, or maybe Tim—saw him and raised a hand, crumpling his serviette into a ball inside his fist.

“Afternoon, sir,” Tom, or Tim said. “Anything I can do for you?”

Becker stopped, and blinked. Someone volunteering? How novel. “Actually,” he said, “you haven’t got time to see about the lock on my door, have you? I’m afraid…uh, it’s broken. Somehow.”

He cleared his throat, and the maintenance man grinned. Tim. Becker was sure this was Tim. Tom had got caught in a hydroponics experiment, and his hair was still coming in green.

“Not a problem,” Tim said. “You’d be sharing space with Lieutenant Howell, am I right?”

Becker raised his eyebrows, but nodded. Come to think of it, he had just seen Howell and Tim talking, on the monitors before…oh God, he hadn’t had time to wash up. Could Tim smell it—smell _Connor_ on him? Becker took a casual step away.

“I…yes, I do,” he said.

Tim’s grin widened briefly. “I’ll have you both right in a jiffy,” he said. “Don’t you worry, sir.”

Becker spared a brief thought for the files in his office. He’d tied the door shut with wire, but it was not only temporary, but weak. Filing cabinets and chicken-wire did not a secure office make. Anyway, he could send Howell down to supervise Tim. With Georgie out, he didn’t have much to do anymore except watch the monitors, and fill out forms. Change of pace might be nice for him.

“Good,” Becker said. “I’ll send Lieutenant Howell down to meet you, and—”

The ADD siren wailed over the PA, noise echoing up and down the hallway with an ear-bleeding whine. Tim winced, and clapped a hand to one ear.

Becker sighed. “Right,” he said. “He’ll meet you at the door—and have some keys made, will you?”

 

***

 

His cup ranneth over. One shoddy arm guard and Robb was stuck filling out reports while Khan swore at Dobson from a bed in the infirmary. Which, of course, meant Becker got to take both Danny Quinn and ARC Four on their first official anomaly sighting.

To top off the outing, Danny had insisted that senior staff arrive in one SUV, so instead of riding in the back of the Transit with ARC Four, Becker and all of his bloody gear were crammed next to Connor and all of _his_ bloody gear all the bloody fucking way to the anomaly. Which, of course, was in a sodding wilderness. Which, of course, was near a populated area.

And Connor wouldn’t speak to him. Connor hadn’t even _looked_ at him, not even when Danny had pulled a U-turn in the middle of the T-junction near Ockley and Becker had been flung across the bench seat straight into Connor’s side. There was a mark underneath his jaw, small, but unmistakable if you were looking. Becker wanted to lick it. This was not good.

“There’s nothing,” Abby announced, standing up from her crouch. She put her hands on her hips and arched her back slightly. “No animal tracks at all—except for the odd family pet, I mean. I think we might have actually caught the anomaly before anything’s come out.”

“Oh, that is disappointing,” Danny murmured to Becker’s right, almost in his bloody ear.

Becker rolled his eyes. In his peripherals, he saw Connor look up from his laptop, briefly, and frown. The back of Becker’s throat ached, and he swallowed.  
McMahon whistled softly, the first sound he’d made since he’d jumped out the back of the Transit and been faced with the glittering, fractured impossibility of a true anomaly. Becker turned his face up to the sky, squinting at the dark grey clouds threading over the treetops. He tightened his grip on his Mossberg; the magnetic pull of the anomaly kept tugging on the muzzle.

It was clear enough now, but if the weather turned they’d be hunting with lowered visibility, in the wet, and if Abby did find anything, for creatures that never bloody seemed to care what sort of world they’d landed in as long as they could eat whatever they came across in it.

“So,” Danny said, clapping his hands together. “What say we—”

“Hold on,” Abby said.

She crouched low to the ground, balancing with one small hand gripping her knee above the hole torn in her black leggings. She stretched her other hand out above a muddy divot, forefinger and thumb stretched perpendicularly to each other.

Becker rocked back on his heels. He raised his hand to catch McMahon’s eye, and jabbed his fingers to the right, and then the left. ARC Four spread out along the perimeter, two aiming out and two aiming in.

“It’s a woman’s bootprint,” Abby said, standing up quickly.

She moved forward, right arm extended until she was standing a metre away from the anomaly. Her head swiveled over her shoulder, wide eyes searching out Connor, still by the SUV with his laptop. Her hand clutched the tranq gun at her waist, knuckles whitening as Becker watched.

“It’s Helen,” she whispered. “I think—I think it’s Helen.”

Becker stepped forward. “Abby, are you sure?” he asked.

She nodded tightly, and then shook her head just as quickly. “Can we chance it?” she asked. “The tracks cross under the anomaly, and with all these footprints I can’t tell if they start there, or just appear out of the scrum.”

Her eyes were showing white at the rims, but Abby was a good ‘un, and her grip on her tranq gun as she unholstered it was solid.

“Right,” Becker said. He jerked his head to the side. “McMahon!”

“Boss?” McMahon swung around to face him.

“Nab Burke,” Becker ordered, “and have him patch me through to the ARC. Turner!”

One of the McMahon’s men looked over from his patch of forest. Becker raised his right fist and brought it down. Turner ran over, angling his back to the anomaly until he’d reached the SUV. That would change, if he lived long enough to gain some experience, but there wasn’t time, and so Becker didn’t bother to smack sense into him as of yet. Helen Cutter was here. He’d been waiting for this one.

“Wait a minute, now, hold on,” Danny said, stepping into Becker’s sightline.

Becker grimaced, and shifted his Mossberg out of position. “Not the time,” he said. “Turner, you’re with senior staff, get them back to the ARC, and—”

“Actually, Becker, I can think of no better time in history,” Danny said, and stepped back into Becker’s sightline. The dumb ginger bastard was _grinning_.

Again, Becker jerked his Mossberg away from Danny’s centre mass, and this time, stood to one side. Turner stepped up instead, sidling in to Becker’s left and casually aiming at the forest floor by way of Danny’s kneecap. Becker appreciated the sentiment, if not the action.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Danny said. “As team leader, I am saying _right now_ that we are staying here, and wishing the lovely Mrs. Cutter a fine day, and a long stay in her Majesty’s best women’s facility.”

Becker’s air hissed between his teeth. “ _Danny_ —”

“Boss?” McMahon asked behind him. “That thing’s starting to pulse again.”

Becker glanced up at the anomaly. It was shifting, the spears of light collapsing in on each other and reforming again. The anomaly swirled, and then shrunk to nothing. Becker inhaled, and then paused, staring through the now empty spot where the anomaly had been. There was something new in the air, something dry and sharp. Becker shifted his Mossberg across his chest as Danny stumbled off and to the side, rubbernecking at the anomaly like he’d never seen one before as he moved past. Becker raised his Mossberg into position, and found himself with Danny at his back, pressed up against Becker’s left side. He elbowed back, but apart from a grunt, Danny stayed put.

“Leave someone here,” Danny said, “We can spare one of your precious squaddies, but if Abby’s right—”

“Abby’s always right,” Connor said.

Becker startled, and Danny chuckled behind him. “Right you are, Connor,” Danny said loudly. “And if that’s true, what’s the point of sending half the search party running for the hills?”

Becker stiffened his back, and looked over his shoulder, fighting a twinge. Danny stared back at him, feathery eyebrows raised. Next to him, Becker saw Turner move that crucial half-step that put Danny back in his range of fire. Where had ARC Four learned their manners.

There were protocols in place for this, plans that made do with all Becker’s available troops, but they’d been cobbled together with the idea that senior staff knew what the hell they were doing. That Becker’s civilian counterpart would be Cutter or Jenny; not this jumped up copper who stole helicopters and flew them at monsters. Lester had made the plans, and he trusted Becker to stick to them. Senior staff were to be protected at all times, but if Becker overruled Danny now…well, senior staff might laugh it off after awhile, but Becker’s mad bastards would never follow the man into the field. Becker’s gut hardened to lead and sunk.

He took a step back, and jerked his head up and down, trying to remember what if felt like to obey someone other than the PK. He could feel McMahon’s eyes boring into him. Over Danny’s shoulder, Conner and Abby were ignoring them all, bent over Connor’s laptop, and whispering fiercely. Becker’s earpiece crackled and popped.

“I’ve patched you in, sir,” Burke said to Becker’s right.

“Sir?” Okri’s voice rumbled into Becker’s ear.

“Execute Hotel Charlie Six,” Becker said, watching fire catch in Danny’s eyes.   
“Senior staff will remain on site with ARC Four, copy.”

There was a pause, and then Okri came back online. “Hotel Charlie Six,” he said, “Good hunting, boss.”

 

***

 

Becker split them up, overriding Danny's insistence that senior staff should clomp their gigantic noisy boots behind Abby, while Becker and his soldiers fanned out around them. Instead, he paired Abby with Ngyuen, Connor with McMahon, and took Danny for himself. They left Turner and Burke ostensibly guarding the vehicles, but mostly staring at the spot where the anomaly had been and muttering to themselves. Becker could almost sympathize, only Danny had apparently picked up where their train of thought had left off, and now he was stuck with a muttering, twig-breaking lunatic at his back. Not that the others were any better off. ARC Four had spaced themselves out close enough to remain in each other's lines of sight, and if it wasn't Danny crashing through the underbrush, it was Abby's peroxide-bright hair, and Connor's stumbling, mumbling monologue as he typed one-handed on the netbook he was clutching with his other.

Becker paused by a pine for Danny to untangle the end of his leather jacket from a bush, and catch up. He rolled his eyes.

“Tracks still on point, Abby?” Becker muttered into his mike.

“Steady as she went,” Abby answered over the radio, equally as quiet. “No one’s joined her. Curving west now.”

So far, that’d been it for signs of Helen. Not a sound, not a scrap of fabric caught on a branch, nor the glint of her mocking smile. Becker could feel them all growing more lax by the second. Becker clutched the stock of his Mossberg more tightly, sighting down the barrel as he moved west, and jerked his head at Danny to follow. _Helen_ could be in the area, couldn’t they understand how serious this was? When he got them all back to the ARC, it was obstacle and survival courses for the rest of their lives until they learned to take more care of themselves. Well, perhaps Abby didn’t need as much help as the rest of them, but _Connor_ …

Becker carefully stepped over a fallen branch, and looked up, absently counting the trees between him and Connor’s position. He should have been walking with McMahon thirty trees to Becker’s left, but he sounded much closer.

“You know something, Becker?” Danny asked, as he snapped every fucking stray branch in his path. “You fascinate me.”

Becker stopped walking, and twisted to catch Danny's eye. He drew his left thumb over his throat in a short jerk. Danny turned his palms to the sky, shrugging, and grinned.

“What? I’m only being honest,” Danny said.

Around them, the previously quiet forest was overlaid by noise upon noise. Becker turned back to the twinned oak trees in front of him, and grimaced. Bloody fucking fabulous, they might as well place an ad in the back of The Sun: Wanted: One Murderess, often dusty, for Life-long Incarceration. Must have access to own clone army.

Becker resigned himself to the inevitable. “Why do I fascinate you, Danny?” he asked. “I don’t suppose it’s something you can tell me in a long e-mail?”

He thought he heard McMahon laugh over the radio, and glared over his shoulder. Well, that’d torn it. Fucking open mics. He’d known Danny less than a month, and he was already well aware of how much the bastard loved an audience.

And there he went; Becker could see it as if it were a slow motion nature film, the unholy delight rippled across Danny’s face as his mouth opened—

“Sir?” Turner’s voice cut in over the comms. “Boss, that light show thing—”

“The anomaly,” Burke cut in, voice shaking. “What the _fuck_ is that, did you see that, Johnny? It fucking moved.”

“It’s opened again,” Turner finished over Burke’s voice. “And I’m getting some noises, snuffling and the like. There’s…Burke, do those sound like hooves to you?”

Becker placed his hand to his earpiece. “Turner, secure the area.”

“ _Jesus Christ!_ ” Burke yelled.

Gunfire burst over the comms, followed by the most godawful bellow Becker’d ever had the misfortune of hearing. Becker started to run, Danny already a yard before him.

“McMahon,” Becker yelled, jumping a fallen log, “back to the trucks, I want a full spread.”

“Wilco, boss,” McMahon said.

“Becker, don’t you _dare_ do what I think that means,” Abby shouted, breathing quick and fast.

The trees blurred around him, a smear of greens and browns that snapped when he broke past their branches until he’d passed Danny completely. He heard Abby yell something sharp—sounded like a command, only to break off with howl of rage—he could hear bellowing, throaty screams and the thud of something—many somethings—shaking the ground, interspersed with the quick slap of gunfire. Two feet past the last oak and suddenly the largest fucking bull Becker’d ever seen was running at him, horns lowered and blood bubbling from its nostrils.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” Danny yelled behind him, as Becker brought up the Mossberg and fired.

The round hit shoulder-high, and the damn thing twitched like it’d been bitten by a mosquito. It kept charging, roaring its head off, and Becker fired again, higher this time, and threw himself into the underbrush at the last second. He felt the tip of a horn score his arm, the earthquake-like jerk of the ground as the bull tore past him resounded through his back as he landed. He twisted up as fast as he could, Mossberg aimed out and towards the bull’s back. His vision wavered and split, half on the end of his rifle, half trying to avoid classifying the blurred mass of black leather that was Danny’s coat bounding towards him as a target.

Danny brushed by him, shouting “Well done, mate!” over his back as he passed, and Becker focused on the bull, slumping into the dirt against a broken tree trunk. A line of holes marked its right side, dribbling blood onto the grass. Its neck was twisted towards him, a gaping hole where its snout had been, all pink meat and white cartilage.

Becker turned and ran back to the vehicles. Ahead, ARC Four were in a semi-circle, firing inward at three bulls and beyond into the anomaly. The bulls were screaming, obviously panicked and in severe pain. The churned grass beneath them was stained red.

To his left, Becker could see Connor kneeling beside the open door of the SUV, pressing both hands against Burke’s right shoulder. His fingers were bloody, and Burke was firing his sidearm over Connor’s back. Danny had joined the circle of soldiers, taking careful aim with his pistol.

“Becker,” Connor shouted over the mic. “They’re Aurochs, they—”

“Stop firing, damn it, that’s _enough_ ,” Abby snarled from the ground. Ngyuen had her pinned underneath his knee.

Becker stepped up to the firing line, racked a shell, and fired. “Drive them back,” he ordered. “Maintain rate of fire.”

It was over pretty quickly. The Aurochs toppled one screaming bloody body at a time until there was nothing left but a ringing in Becker’s ears, and the sour-metal tang of blood in the air. McMahon and Ngyuen sent a few more rounds into the anomaly, but nothing stepped through.

Becker took a breath, standing aside so that Ngyuen could backstep over to Burke and Connor, already pulling open the zip on his kitbag with one hand.

“Widen the perimeter,” Becker said, keeping an eye on the pulsating anomaly. “Connor?”

“Ye—yeah?” he heard behind him, and echoed in his ear.

Becker licked his lips, and refused to turn his head. Abby was standing up, her fists shook at her sides. There was blood on the front of her shirt and sprayed across her face.

“Can you work Burke’s radio?” Becker asked. “I need to be patched through to the ARC for a cleanup crew.”


End file.
